


Fortune Favours the Bold

by SolarQueen



Series: Dark Waters [2]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: A play on everyone's favourite trope, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Chizue: I'm a lesbian, Does Prince Zuko Is Gay?, Every Nation is Morally Grey, Fluff and Angst, I'll let you decide who is who, In the Beginning, In which the chaos trio is one sarcastic boy one big anger boy and one theatre boy, M/M, Mans just wants his Crew to be okay, Minor Character Death, Miscommunication, Misogyny, Ozai (Avatar) is an Asshole, Past Character Death, Past Child Abuse, Pre-Canon, Protective Zuko (Avatar), Rebellion, Sokka is just straight up not having a good time, Sokka: I thought you were Fire Nation, Somehow chapter 4 gave us subtle Hakoda/Bato vibes, Swearing, The Crew Has None of it, The character tag order really doesn't mean much past Hakoda, The version of this au no one needed nor wanted, War, Zhao (Avatar) Is An Asshole, Zuko is an Awkward Turtleduck, but by accident, but we're here now, that was not planned, there i said it
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-30
Updated: 2021-01-18
Packaged: 2021-03-09 22:48:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 30,790
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27663601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SolarQueen/pseuds/SolarQueen
Summary: One month before Avatar Aang awakens from his icy slumber, Sokka of the Southern Water Tribe makes a rather poor decision that winds him on the steel cold ship of a banished Crown Prince and his ragtag crew of soldiers, sailors, and stowaways.The crew doesn't want him there, Sokka doesn't want to be there, but communication with his dad goes awry very quickly, and Sokka's stuck learning more about his enemies than he'd like to.Can- Can they just not act like people? For one second?Especially the Prince, with his stupid hair and stupid jerkbending.
Relationships: Iroh & Sokka (Avatar), Iroh & Zuko (Avatar), Sokka & The Gaang (Avatar), Sokka & Zuko's Crew, Sokka/Zuko (Avatar), The Gaang & Zuko (Avatar), Zuko & Zuko's Crew (Avatar)
Series: Dark Waters [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2116137
Comments: 346
Kudos: 1179
Collections: Fandom Trumps Hate 2020





	1. The Boy From the Water

**Author's Note:**

  * For [EffieAgo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/EffieAgo/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Salvage](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21116591) by [MuffinLance](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MuffinLance/pseuds/MuffinLance). 
  * Inspired by [The Art of Burning](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25736617) by [hella1975](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hella1975/pseuds/hella1975). 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, this has been through some revisions, but FINALLY, after a hell of a year, I'm getting this out there and all within the month of December, because that's the rules of FTH and half of the fic, is still- technically (pls don't kill me) under construction, so, if the preliminary 10 chapters I've set suddenly goes up as I work through my far too detailed outline that I'll inevitably veer off from, you didn't see shit. I will probably work somewhat slow-ish in the beginning, but if the chapter count gets longer than the amount of month I have left- well, more regular updates for you guys !
> 
> This fic is pretty much inspired by every and all 'Zuko gets dadnapped by the Water Tribe' fic that's out there, but I felt like having a bit of chaotic fun with it and going with 'Sokka finds his way onto a Fire Nation ship' so, this is slightly pre-canon to give Zukka a nice clean slate to work with; also featuring a few fun-loving critters I lost the descriptions for six separate times during the planning stages of this fic, and a heaping helping of... mild miscommunication on many accounts.  
> There are OCs because to have interactions, I must give the crew personality and backstory - they may not amazingly line up with everything, but I've stared at the same timeline for so long and none of it has absorbed so... deal with it; I hope you like them all the same, some are inspired by MuffinLance's great OCs and other's have little influences, but most of them are my children and I love them.
> 
> Now I'm rambling my ass off while listening to Mr Brightside like the stereotypical uni bitch I am, so buckle your seatbelts fuckers for the least exciting adaptation of this trope to fall into your feed, this is also my first fic in the ATLA fandom after rewatching it for the first time since I was a wee child so, like, please be nice to me ?  
> Effie, my lovely bidder, I hope you enjoy this after the length you've waited for it.
> 
> Let's fucking go.

Sokka doesn’t regret a lot of things, except, perhaps, _this_. 

He must admit, he’s the finest judge of his abilities in the whole Southern Water Tribe; he knows what he can and can’t do, and he handles himself with pride, dignity, and all the modestly of the tribe combined.

But that’s not to say his immaculate decision to try ice dodging on his own (as _practice_ for when his dad gets back) was… the wisest.

The spiral of cold water sucking him under the surface certainly doesn’t think so.

* * *

The boy on the deck gags out a mouthful of frozen water and Jee manages to get him on his side before he can swallow it again. 

Zuko watches, breathless and shivering, as Kagami tries to twist as much water out of the boy’s parka as she can, holding the soaked fabric over the ship’s railing; Kosuke refuses to come any closer than his stance by the bowsprit, and he already got most of the water out of the boy’s underclothes so Zuko won’t ask any more of him, not with his other half below deck.

Something warm settles over his shoulders, a blanket from Engineer Chizue’s stash near the boiler room, the woman in question brushes a hand by his shoulder as she breezes past to lay another over the stranger. She plucks a cigarette out of the breast pocket of her jumpsuit and doesn’t even have to ask before Jee sends a stray spark its way, she sends a large puff of smoke into the air and pinches the bridge of her nose, crossing the deck towards Kosuke.

Zuko isn’t sure where his uncle is, perhaps already speaking with Chef Michi about what might help fight off the cold that’s sunk deep into his and this boy’s bones - the boy’s certainly, Zuko isn’t sure how long it’d taken him to notice the flash of dark skin beneath the water before he’d thrown himself over the rail and pulled panicked noises from his crew. 

At first he’d thought it one of the twins despite the two spending most of their time inside as they pass through southern waters, but their complexions are lightened by Fire Nation blood. So Zuko knew, jumping in, that he’d be saving someone of the Water Tribe in this area, but there are rules to the sea, rules he’s learned in his time on the water, and leaving a man to drown is a sin amongst sailors - the ones he’s met, anyway.

“Well, he’s Water Tribe for sure,” Kagami says, looking over with a razor-sharp boomerang dangling between her fingers and glinting in the afternoon sun. She hands the weapon to Jee, who looks it over warily, and casts her gaze toward Chizue, raising the parka, “you alright if I hang this in the boiler room to dry?”

Chizue waves her away with a begrudging nod, tapping the ashes from the end of her cigarette over the edge of the ship and pulling Kosuke down by his collar to mutter something into his ear. 

In an instant, Kagami disappears, moving with the air in that quiet way Zuko has picked up on. In the next, Uncle is squatting by his side and Zuko’s attention diverts away from his crew and back to the fact he’s still shivering.

“Prince Zuko, I think you could use some tea.” 

Uncle hands him a cup and for once Zuko takes it without complaint. He can’t help but notice that Uncle has _that_ tone to his voice, one Zuko tends to hear when he’s done something bordering on treasonous, it makes his shoulders hunch and his breath hitch. Uncle believes in spirits though, and surely the laws of La are more important than his father’s at the moment - unless his father’s rules are Agni’s, in which case Zuko has completely gone against his father _and_ his Nation as a whole, which-

A hand lands on his shoulder and he looks up at his Uncle’s soft eyes, “you saved his life, Nephew.”

His pent-up breath escapes him in a rush, it makes him feel a little better, not that it determines whether he just ruined his chances of going home, but the only person who finds an issue with the people Zuko picks up seems to be Zhao. 

Mind racing with what he’s supposed to do now, the boy still lying on his deck with barely perceptible groans passing his lips, he sips at the tea and focuses its warmth into his chi. He needs to centre himself, but sitting out here as the sun starts to set behind the cliffs of ice around them isn’t going to help him much.

“Captain,” Jee calls, wrapping the boy in the blanket draped over him further and hoisting him over

The brig is full of crates with tea leaves in them - they can thank Uncle for _that_ \- and Zuko isn’t sure if it would be too cruel to put someone already cold down there where the heat barely reaches. 

He may be Water Tribe, but Zuko has to follow through with this rescue, then the boy will owe him and the crew and he can use that for information on the Avatar, or what the Southern Water Tribe is doing right now. Zuko doesn’t think that information will give him an opening to go home… but there’s no harm in trying.

“The empty officer’s quarters,” he rasps, realising only then what his little dip in the water has done to him, “my floor and Uncle’s is the warmest, he’ll heal faster up there.”

Jee nods and walks away, Chizue following after him after snuffing her cigarette out on the edge of the ship, leaving the ashes to the wind. 

Kosuke comes upon Zuko’s other side and helps Uncle haul him to his feet, directing them to join the others inside.

“Let’s get you warmed up, Captain.”

The deck goes quiet.

* * *

Sokka hates this, he doesn’t know _where_ he is, _why_ someone is wrapped around his and feeling like they’re burning a spirit’s damned fever, _he_ doesn’t want the fever, thank you very much, so if they could just- 

He shifts, but the person around him shifts too, pinning his arms further into his side and he whines without meaning to. “Get _off_ ,” he mumbles, trying to fight against an ever-tightening grip and failing miserably. His energy putters out like the sun in winter.

The person holding him sighs, breath hot against the back of Sokka’s neck, “I don’t wanna be here any more than you do, kid.”

There’s someone watching them, a small figure by the door. He thinks it’s Katara at first, the figure and his sister are the same height, but this person - this woman - has skin too pale and hair too black, pulled back in a bun atop her head with little more than a withering piece of string. 

“Well, he’s alive,” the woman states, pushing off the wall and releasing another puff of smoke out of the doorway, “I’ll leave him with you.”

Whoever’s holding him shifts, arms warm around Sokka’s wrapped body, “Chi, I told you I’m not- _Chi_!”

“G’night Jee,” _Chi_ ’s voice echoes down the corridor, “I’ll pray to Agni he doesn’t keep you awake all night!”

Agni. The sun.

If Sokka had it in him, his breath would escape him in uncontrolled bursts, but the cold that’s settled itself into his body makes his lungs slow and his coherence only seems to get worse as his thoughts trip over themselves trying to catch up with what he’s seeing and hearing.

His gaze flickers to the other side of the room and there, hanging against the wall, an imposing symbol of his incoming, painful, utterly inevitable, death, is the red flag of the Fire Nation. Mocking.

What the _fuck_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay I'm actually the worst at beginnings, so this might be utterly all over the place and way shorter than I normally do, but it felt right to not have the beginning too long. I wanted enough set-up to bounce off of into the next chapter, so the switches in POV may seem a bit... abrupt, but idk, I haven't written for this fandom before, I'm trying T^T


	2. The People of the Red Ship

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay- first of all- the reception this fic got ?????? The amount of kudos in less than a week ????? Cut the cameras, deadass, no one wants to see me crying- but also wtf I'm terrified, I never have this many people to keep impressed I-  
> Every time a new comment came in I got immeasurably excited- I'm glad none of y'all pointed out some of the shit I noticed when I was rereading the chapter again because pffft wtf was I on to miss some of the things I did (am I going back to fix them ? Probably not)
> 
> N E Ways, enough pointing out *my* flaws, let's talk about wtf happened to this chapter, because, as we can see she went longer than the last but not as long as I expected; it did take me forever to fucking finish though. Tbh I think something in me just wanted to introduce most of the characters in one go to get it out of the way especially after my many "but where else would I fit this" conversations with myself over the course of writing this. Unfortunately only a little bit of Zuko today, but we get more of him and more Zukka interactions next time  
> If anybody has any particular preference about chapter length... let it be known because I have this terrible habit of writing 5-10k chapters when I get further into a fic, and with this I might end up covering a lot in a single chapter the more we get into canon events- so like, if y'all ain't about that life that'd be helpful to know 💀
> 
> I'm also not gonna lie to you, my dumbass thought Wani was the actual name for Zuko's ship because it was used everywhere, now I know it's not, but it feels like it is so I'm gonna use it too.
> 
> Once again, thanks for the warm welcome for this fic, not writing for atla before really set my nerves on fire but y'all are fuckin lovely !  
> 

The morning is…  _ something _ .

Zuko wakes up when someone knocks on the door to his room against the backdrop of  _ yelling _ at the end of the hall (really, how much trouble is one hypothermic water tribe kid?). 

He drags a hand down the right side of his face and sighs, wrestling out of his covers - wrapped tightly around him at Uncle’s request - and half-stumbling across to his storage chest. He pulls on basic armour pieces, light and breathable, and throws his hair up haphazardly before crossing to the door.

Zenshiro’s leaning against the doorframe, back against one side to face down towards the currently-occupied quarters where the yelling is coming from. His green eyes sparkle with that mischievous gleam Zuko’s grown used to ignoring when it's not directed at him.

He recognises Kagami’s distinct yelp, followed quickly by, “for Agni’s sake,  _ hold him _ !”

“I’m  _ trying _ -!” Then there’s Kiyotaka, the old man probably switched with Jee during the night out of pity alone.

The corner of the Zenshiro’s mouth quirks upwards, but his attention turns, now solely on Zuko, “y’doin’ alright?”

He gives a non-committal hum. Uncle’s told him to avoid over-exerting himself today, which means he’ll either be forced to stay in his room, or he’ll be meditating out on deck, whichever option Uncle thinks is more beneficial (or whichever option Zuko can stomach more).

“Went looking through my shit,” Zenshiro continues, completely ignoring the cacophony of crashing in the end room. He holds up a scroll, “think a friend of my old man gave this to me a couple months back. Might not be to your standards but it's better than watching a candle all day.”

Zuko chooses to ignore that last remark, taking the scroll with a mumbled acknowledgement and tossing it onto his futon; Zenshiro leans more solidly against the door to Zuko’s quarters as he properly ties his hair into its phoenix tail. 

He pushes out into the corridor and stomps loudly towards the end room, for a moment the sounds of chaos stops, and by the time Zuko reaches the door, Kagami lets out a triumphant laugh and Kiyotaka exhales heavily. Zenshiro peeks around Zuko’s shoulders when they get to the door, snorting at the trio in the room and earning an exasperated huff from their crewmates. 

Kagami has the Water Tribe boy pinned on the floor on his stomach, the blankets from the bunk around him like a binding, her hair is falling out of it’s ponytail around her eyes, but her hands are too occupied by keeping the boy held down to push it out of the way. There’s a bruise blossoming on her cheek.

Kiyotaka sits with soup dripping from his greying hair. He glares at the kid, the kid glares back blearily, and leans back against the wall, “fiesty one, he is.”

“What happened?” Zenshiro asks, failing miserably to stifle his laughter behind his hand.

“I brought food up,” Kagami huffs, trying to nudge her hair out of her face with her elbow, “wanted to see what the kid’s strength levels were like and let him feed himself. The second he got an arm out he threw the tray at Taka and fell at me.”

Zuko watches the boy, taking a step into the room and narrowing his eyes when blue turns on him.

“Stup’d hair.”

Zenshiro lets out an undignified cackle, slapping a hand over his mouth when Zuko turns and glares at him, his eyes still glimmer in amusement.

“Go get the shackles from the brig.”

“Y’got it, Captain.” 

He glares  _ harder _ , because ‘Captain’ is not a word Zenshiro favours. 

With the room one person emptier, Zuko crosses to Kagami and the boy, giving the latter a light kick in the general area he thinks his legs should be, and trying to feel satisfied by the growling. He shares a look with Kagami, waiting for her slight nod, then pulls the rest of her hair down and gets to work piling it back into its ponytail.

“Did he do that?” He asks, inspecting the bruise on her cheek and watching her shoulders slump with a breathy laugh.

“Kid couldn’t hurt a fly like this-” beneath her, the boy lets out an indignant noise, they ignore it “-he just caught me off guard, landed on my arm.” She jangles her vambrace at him.

Kiyotaka grumbles from the other side of the room, “I’m quite alright too, Prince Zuko,” he stands, brushing off his armour, “I’ll be taking my leave.”

If Zuko has to give the boy credit for anything, it’s letting him watch Kiyotaka walk himself down the long hallway to the showers with his hair still dripping. 

As Zuko ties off Kagami’s hair, he has to pull himself back before his hands work it into a braid. She mumbles a thanks as Zenshiro wanders back in, twirling the shackles around his finger and humming one of Jiang’s Earth Kingdom tunes.

There’s little verbal communication between the three of them as they wrestle the boy back onto the futon. Kagami does make it clear, however, that if they shackle his hands, he’s likely to break or dislocate something if he acts out again - her obligations as a medic outway her obligations as his crew in this scenario. So, they free one of his feet, Zenshiro narrowly avoiding a kick to the face, and shackle his ankle to the closest pipe running up the wall.

Zenshiro leans against the wall by the door, folding his arms and scrutinising the shackles, “and if he knows how to pick locks?” 

“Then we’ll know he’s well enough to answer some questions,” Zuko grumbles, “watch him for a few hours.” He ignores the indignant groan and walks out with Kagami on his tail, shutting the door behind them and leaving Zenshiro to his own devices.

She steers them left down a hallway, rubbing absently at her cheek and swaying slightly with the bounce of the ship on the water.

“Any clues as to who he is, where he’s supposed to be?” Zuko asks after a moment, stopping by the t-section to either lead below deck or out onto it.

“Hasn’t said a word beyond the odd ashmaker comments,” she says, rolling her eyes, “Jiang’s looking over his things, seeing if there’s a signifier on anything.”

He hums.

“Iroh’s downstairs,”  _ feeding Sparks and drinking tea  _ goes unsaid, “wanna come down and see Fireflake?”

He follows her.

* * *

Sokka isn’t sure how long it takes him to become more aware of his surroundings than he has been. Hours have blurred together so easily he can’t tell if he’s been bound by blankets for more than a day or two; a headache lingers, but he feels more coherent than before, coherent enough to feign otherwise in an attempt to gather information about this place.

Every half day someone new enters the room, they switch the shackle from one ankle to the other - the old man he vaguely remembers throwing soup at grumbled about a medic being too specific about these things - and no one’s ever alone when they do that, just when they’re guarding the room.

He knows their patterns, recognises voices, and he can get out of here. He can.

People are walking down the hallway now, just as Sokka’s trying to get an idea on what the shackle on his ankle is like. The footsteps are loud, echoing along the metal, and voices begin to follow the footsteps through the crack in the door left by the last person who was watching him.

Sokka crams his arms back into his prison of blankets, lying back and shifting into a mildly uncomfortable position to close his eyes and get control of his breathing.

“You’re quite sure?” This one’s new, an older man with a heartier voice than the other grumbling old man. 

He’s joined by someone, the two of them entering the room. One stays by the door and the other comes over, unlocking his shackle though not immediately closing it around his other ankle.

“His boomerang had a stag-wolf carved onto it,” the man’s companion, and the one beside Sokka now, is a woman (so that’s another woman on this ship,  _ why _ ?), her voice solid and carrying, “so, unless he’s plateau and stole it off a dead man, he’s coastal.”

Sokka doesn’t like the ashmakers touching his stuff, or insinuating he’d go after a fellow Southern Tribe while there’s a  _ war _ happening.

The old man hums, “I suppose that’s a conversation we’ll have when he’s feeling much better.” Maybe the man knows Sokka’s listening, he actually sounds a bit concerned. “My nephew may not express it, but we’re grateful for your help, Jiang."

Sokka has to be making it up when it sounds like the woman smiles, “it’s the least I can do, General.”

General. Wonderful. Sokka’s going to die, glad that’s properly established now.

This  _ General _ asks  _ Jiang _ (is that an ashmaker name? Sokka can’t tell) if she’d like to play something called pai sho out on the deck. Sokka has no idea what that is but it sounds like an ashmaker game and anything ashmaker is inherently evil and out to destroy the world, it’s probably about who can eat the most babies. 

The woman says something about a  _ Jee _ training  _ the boys  _ out on deck and that sounds more terrifying than pai sho so Sokka wouldn’t want to play out there either - but he has to, he has to sneak across a deck with training firebenders to get off this metal death trap. They decide they’ll play in the General’s office instead, ‘some peace and quiet with some tea’  _ apparently _ , and Sokka lets them leave.

The idiots left the shackle off.

Sokka didn’t think it’d be this easy, Tui and La who let those two come and check on him, they didn’t even  _ stay _ . He scrambles out of the blankets and looks at the abandoned chain - it can’t be this easy.

But he pushes out of the room and the corridor is  _ empty _ , it’s unnerving, Sokka doesn’t know if they’re setting him up or if the ashmakers are actually just boneheaded. He wants it to be the latter, so he’s convincing himself it’s the latter.

Down the hallway he wanders.

All the ships Sokka’s ever been on have been wooden, this ship is all grey, and pipelines, and steel, it’s wrong. How does this even float? How do they get anywhere? A sail can’t push something this heavy, he would hate to be surrounded by such a dull colour everyday when they’re already out in the endless ocean.

Thinking of that, he wonders how far from home he is, if Gran-Gran and Katara have been looking for him, if they’ve decided he drowned or froze out by himself. Katara’s not old enough to be by herself yet, the tribe certainly isn’t ready to lose him when all the other warriors are  _ gone _ . There’s not even any way to tell dad if they did think he was dead. 

A sound down the corridor pulls his attention back to the fact he has no idea where he’s going. He doesn’t know which way they’re coming from, but he knows they’re getting closer, and he panics, head whipping around and looking for the closest door.

He finds one, but it’s sign is written in a language he can’t read -  _ fucking ashmakers and their unreadable language _ \- but without much thought, he stumbles into the room.

He goes tripping over a pipe trailing the length of the floor almost immediately, trying to catch himself against another and only serving to burn his hand on the heat of it and still land him on the floor. 

The room is blisteringly hot and he feels like he’s leaked his body weight in sweat already, it doesn’t help the awful pain assaulting his hand. Something makes a noise, and Sokka looks up to find he’s not exactly alone.

It’s the woman from when he first woke up, a cigarette between her teeth again, and her jumpsuit sleeves pushed above her elbows, the legs cuffed just under her knees. She’s stoking a coal fire in a metal case  _ without  _ gloves which makes Sokka both terrified of her and worried about how she copes in a room this hot.

He spots his parka hanging off a pipe above her head, a few blankets dangling from more pipes further up and he wonders, briefly, how in the world she’s supposed to reach them.

Because he was right, despite his minor brain fog at the time, the woman is barely taller than Katara - which means she’s probably the height of a swan-stork if she’s  _ lucky  _ \- black hair still tied by the measly string that should have either burned to a crisp by now, or snapped in two. 

Up close, he can see her eyes are some amalgamated colour between rust and sunlight. Now, normally, he may think it’s a pretty colour, if it wasn’t a) attached to an ashmaker, and b) currently being dangerously narrowed at him.

“And what do you think you’re doing in here?”

Her voice is smoother than Sokka feels like it’s allowed to be, given where she seems to hide out, and how much she smokes, who does that? Is it even safe to smoke in here? How are her lungs okay?

Sokka doesn’t know what to do, he flounders her a moment, scrambling to his feet as fast as he can with his hand sending a jolt of pain every time he moves it or presses it against the floor to help him with his footing. 

“What are  _ you _ doing in here?” He counters, after very little thinking, and very little awareness for  _ where he is _ , “you’re a girl, shouldn’t you be someplace else.”

That comes to be the worst possible thing he’s ever said in the presence of anyone of this ship  _ ever _ . Her head tilts, tilts in that way that makes Sokka fear one of Gran-Gran’s shoes is going to come hurtling into the room, her cigarette shifts between her teeth and she takes several quick steps forward.

Sokka has nowhere to go, he can’t go backwards without falling on another pipe, and the burning of his hand is enough to stop him even considering that option. So she gets to him without much of a fight and grabs his ear, tugging him down closer to her height and yanking him across the room to nearly shove his whole face into the burning fire.

“You wanna show me how to do my job?” She pinches his ear with more strength than even Katara, “go ahead, kid,  _ show me _ .”

Sokka splutters. This ship is weird enough having so many women on board doing jobs a much better suited man could be doing, he’s aware there’s plenty of those on board, but to have even one woman with  _ this _ attitude, Sokka doesn’t know what to do that won’t get his face burned worse than his hand. 

She raises an eyebrow at him, “no?” Her eyes glinting threateningly with the light of the fire. She could pull that out and throw it at him, he’s sure, but instead she forces him away and dusts her hands on her jumpsuit, “continue on with that escape then.”

His mouth works its way into a frown, “you’re not… stopping me?”

She flicks her cigarette into the steel trap and slams the door closed loud enough to make him flinch; she smirks at him, Sokka  _ swears _ he sees fangs, “oh, I don’t have to.”

That’s not ominous at all.

She does, however, turn out to be very, very right.

The boy who’s watched him the most, all shaggy black hair and eyes too green to be fully Fire Nation, grabs him the second he pushes the closest door open, gripping him in a headlock and letting Sokka see just  _ how many _ people are on deck. 

No wonder that woman let him leave, now he looks like a moron.

“So you took the bait  _ and _ pissed off Chi,” the ashmaker laughs, a real belly-laugh that sounds almost too old to be coming out of a face as young as his, “solid execution, kid.”

Sokka struggles, if futilely, to get out of the boy’s hold, but he holds firm and only squeezes harder the more Sokka tries. The boy gives him a dry chuckle and lets him up, grip around his neck moving to dig nails - more like claws - into his arm. 

“Back to your room now, water boy.”

Across the deck Sokka catches the eye of two crewmates, two crewmates who look more like the people from home than the people on this ship. A man and a woman, both clad in the helmetless armour most of the other people are, their complexions are somewhere between the pale of the Fire Nation and the dark of the Water Tribe and it almost throws Sokka for a loop, to see those two mixed. 

The woman’s eyes are a darker version of that short woman’s but still just as striking, her hair black and cropped around her ears which is just  _ weird _ . Even from here Sokka catches sight of a dark, spidering scar along her left hand up to the exposed skin of her neck and he can’t help but wonder what it’s from.

The man puts him off the most. His eyes are the same blue as Sokka’s dad’s and he doesn’t like it  _ at all _ . Why does this guy get to look so Water Tribe when he’s siding with a bunch of invaders and murderers? Why does he get to look so Water Tribe when he chooses to tie his dark hair up in some Fire Nation top knot over a wolf tail? 

The woman makes it very clear what she is by the flame that erupts in her palm, a pointed glare right at Sokka like  _ he’s _ the problem. He tries not to flinch but given the tug the black haired boy gives him, he still does.

He can’t help but wonder who in their right mind would choose the  _ Fire Nation _ as the side of their heritage they’d stay loyal to, but then he remembers ashmakers aren’t normal, and these two, in every way, are more ashmaker than Water Tribe.

“Ichigo, Kosuke!” A whistle echoes across the deck and the woman snuffs her flame out as she and the man turn toward the noise. Sokka tries to look too, but he’s tugged back below deck before he can see who called the two.

The march back to the room is a slow, embarrassing affair with the boy getting such a  _ kick _ out of Sokka’s escape attempt that he keeps cracking up every time he thinks about it. Which is every five minutes apparently.

By the time they get back the medic is there, brown hair up in a ponytail and dark eyes watching the two intently; she has a bag hanging from her shoulder, and she pushes off the wall by the door to take Sokka from the boy.

“Alright, Zen,” she huffs, a hint of amusement in her eyes, “no need to embarrass him the whole way here.”

The boy sticks his tongue out like a  _ child _ and wanders away still giggling. 

Sokka’s pulled back into the room and shackled to the pipe again, it’s the same ankle as before but he refuses to acknowledge the woman, folding his arms and glaring.

She doesn’t seem to care though, placing her bag against the table across the room and flipping it open. Sokka listens to her move around glass jars and wooden boxes, trying to catch sight of anything he could snatch the next time he tries getting off this thing.

“When you try escaping, best not to get into Chizue’s space,” she says, the corner of her mouth quirking up in a smile. She brandishes a jar of something and a roll of bandages like prized gold.

Sokka’s mouth moves before he thinks, “is she even supposed to be in there-” but he cuts himself off with the look he gets, instead leaning further back into the wall and glaring harder at the open door, “she wasn’t wearing gloves.”

The medic inhales sharply through her nose, “that woman, I swear to  _ Agni- _ ” she cuts herself off much like Sokka had, inhaling slower and crossing the room again to fight Sokka for his burned hand, “like I said, just be careful, she  _ will _ eat you next time.”

Sokka can’t tell if she’s joking.

**~#~**

The medic doesn’t guard the room like everyone else, and they won’t move Sokka to whatever infirmary they have, so she keeps having to come up during the day with a bag of all the stuff she uses. She won’t tell him why, even when he asks nicely (or as nicely as he can while tip-toeing around pissing another ashmaker off) and she actively laughs in his face when he says something about one of the other people on this ship as if they make fun of each other all the time.

His hand stays wrapped, the medic says the burn isn’t too serious but she has to come back every twelve hours to rub salve on it and wrap it back up so it doesn’t get infected. Sokka doesn’t think he believes her.

That’s why she’s back now, two days after his first escape attempt and sat on the floor of the room wrapping bandages around Sokka’s hand again. 

As she’s tying off the end she pauses, head tilting towards the door she always leaves open when she’s in here. Sokka strains to hear something, but he doesn’t, not even when she stands and crosses to the door to look left down the hallway.

“Oh,  _ Summerstorm _ !” She disappears.

Sokka’s an idiot, for this he knows he is, but if he didn’t take every chance given to him to get off this ship then he’d hate himself more than he does for falling for this obvious opening again. 

So he scrambles, pushing himself to the door and peering down the corridor she went down to see if she’s still there. When she’s not, he runs straight, but he doesn’t even make it halfway before he skids to a halt and stares wide-eyed down at a turtle-shelled bird hissing at him from the floor. 

He could probably kick it and run, it barely reaches his shins, but he doesn’t know what it is, and if it’s here that means it can probably light him on fire like everything else on this La forsaken boat.

The medic comes back to the corridor and he resigns himself back to captivity, if only to avoid the danger this thing poses.

It’s still  _ hissing _ at him.

“I can’t believe you fell for that again,” the medic laughs, crossing the short distance towards him, “here I thought you’d get further than the middle of the-  _ oh _ .”

She stops short by his side and stifles a snort behind her fist.

Sokka doesn’t know what’s so funny about his life being in mortal peril like this, “what is this thing and will it breathe fire on me?”

Now she outright laughs, passing him and picking the animal to  _ cuddle it _ in her arms like it's not a fire-breathing, people-killing machine. It seems to take a second to enjoy the moment with her, then goes back to glaring and hissing at Sokka.

“This  _ thing _ is Fireflake. She’s a turtleduck, they don’t breathe fire.”

“Why do you have it on your ship?”

“Because she followed the Captain on board.” She says that like it’s obvious.

“You couldn’t, I dunno, drop her off in a nice little Earth Kingdom pond?”  _ Or eat her _ he doesn’t add, mostly because he thinks it’d make this woman cry, but also because  _ Fireflake _ (what kind of name is that?) looks ready to chew his fingers off.

“And abandon her?” That looks like it upset her more than the eating comment ever could, “she’s Fire Nation, she stays with us. Now c’mon, back to your room before we have to throw you in the brig.”

She steers him back the short distance to the room and settles them back into the positions they were before. The shackle returned, her medical bag packed.

“Now that we know you’re well enough to make two different escape attempts, you’ll be meeting the Captain tomorrow and answering some of our questions.”

Sokka doesn’t want to meet this  _ Captain _ , there’s already a spirits-damned ashmaker General here, he doesn’t want to think or witness or piss off this Captain as much as he’s pissed off some of the people below him. He won’t be answering any questions either, no matter what they do to him, he doesn’t know what they want and if it’s anything to do with home or the fleet, Sokka’s mouth is shut.

“Special delivery!” In a single moment, the man who’s been bringing him food every evening enters as bright as he usually does. He’s more shoulders than he is man and, when they’d first met, Sokka hadn't been sure if he was impressed or terrified.

The man places a tray against the table, this time with two bowls of some noodle dish. The medic excitedly grabs one with a rushed thanks, the other is pressed between Sokka’s hands; he doesn’t take the first bite, hasn’t at any of these meals, but the man just grins at him from the table and doesn’t step forward to taste-test like he has before.  _ That _ sets off Sokka’s alarm bells. 

Until the medic giggles. _Too_ _normal_.

“Don’t worry,” she takes her chopsticks and dips them into Sokka’s meal, speaking around them after swallowing a bite, “if we wanted you dead we wouldn’t have put so much effort into healing the hypothermia.”

That’s not nearly as reassuring as Sokka thinks she wanted that to be. But he takes a breath and picks up his chopsticks, taking a cautious bite. It tastes amazing like everything else has and he  _ hates it _ , so he puts the utensils back and glares at the two.

“Who are you people?”

“I’m Kagami, ship medic and animal caretaker,” the medic says, holding a hand against her chest before waving up to the man, “this is Michi, head chef.”

“Okay...” he doesn’t need  _ names _ , names make them human and they  _ aren’t _ , “but where am I?”

“You’re on board the Wani,” the chef says, all smiles like that’s a  _ good _ thing, “captained by Prince Zuko of the Fire Nation, and independent of any navy fleet.”

This is it. Sokka’s really going to die.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Everyone on board is either angsty, chaotic, a dumbass, gay, or all of the above.  
> Thank you for your time.


	3. The Captain

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not me waking up Monday morning to the stats on this fic having doubled- what the fUCK; OVER 500 KUDOS NOW ???? WHAT THE FUCK GUYS  
> Hope y'all know I appreciate the fuck outta you and that you keep my crops watered even if I'm weirdly overwhelmed because my fics don't do this kind of circulation and its WEIRD. You really came through with appreciating the crew too, like, I am so glad because I love all of them; also ✨ Fireflake Supremacy ✨ came through as well, she's an icon we can't forget.
> 
> I'm gonna be a brave bean and turn comment moderation off, I usually have it on for my own sake of not getting anxious about comments, but this fic has gotten way bigger than what I'm used to, so I'm gonna trial run free commenting, and if y'all are good, you can keep free comment privileges like the good eggs you are. You might've also noticed the chapter count go up, cause, I've been outlining further and I don't think 12 is even the final number; if you see it go up again... no you didn't.
> 
> I'd like y'all to know I have 2 assignments for uni due in these next two weeks... but I'm getting extensions for both because fuck off to the people who think doing English is EASY; also my life is a series of catastrophes and my mental health knows no normal state... so when I inevitably don't actually finish this fic in the month of December as planned, no one report me to the FTH police cause I WILL finish this thing, whether it spills into the new year and even more uni deadlines or not.
> 
> Casual side note of this chapter wasn't supposed to have everything in it that it did, but some of the characters took the reigns and they just did what they wanted so it took me an embarrassingly long amount of time to write this than I wanted it to; apologies for this taking a whole ass week, my liberal use of italics continues, and upon posting this, it is almost 4am, so-  
> Enjoy !

They’re having this conversation in his room.

_ They’re having this conversation in his room _ .

(Okay well, not  _ his _ room, as if he’d want to call an ashmaker’s room  _ his _ , but he’s staying here,  _ they _ put him here, and maybe thinking of it as his room will make him feel a little safer than he feels now; which is to say, better than not at all.)

But that’s beside Sokka’s point, what matters is the fact that a little cherry-picked group of crew members are standing in his  _ doorway _ , talking about  _ handcuffing him to one of them _ so they don’t have to pull people away from their jobs to watch him all day. They’re completely  _ ignoring  _ Sokka, sitting right here still shackled to the pipe on the wall, and he’s pretty sure they’re doing this to scare him.

What’s worse? They brought the  _ bird _ with them. It glares at him from where it rests in the arms of the crewmate he heard speaking to the  _ General _ a few days ago.  _ Jiang _ , that’s her name; since then, this is her first appearance, and seeing her is far more shocking than he had been expecting.

She’s Earth Kingdom. Unequivocally Earth Kingdom. Her eyes are brown like the wood from the boats back home, and her hair is a special shade of the same that tints almost red when hit by the sun that peeks through the porthole in the room. She wears her nation’s colours proudly (Sokka lost his blues days ago, he still flinches when he looks down at  _ red _ ), the greens a contrast against the reds of everyone else yet still, somehow, slide right into the fold of the crew. Sokka doesn’t even know whether to call this treason or not, not when even the fans at her hip are branded with the Earth Kingdom emblem, but it  _ has  _ to be.

Her gaze sticks on him sometimes, not narrowed like the engineer’s, or with dull boredom like the old man’s, Sokka doesn’t even know if it’s curiosity, she just  _ looks _ , and he can’t tell if it makes him uncomfortable or like he has someone on this ship who might actually help him. 

But then, she’s also the one who told them which Tribe he’s from because of a marking on his boomerang; she knows things, and she’s giving them that information. About what else or in exchange for what, he isn’t sure, but perhaps the emblems on her clothing mean nothing and she really is a traitor to her nation; to the  _ world _ .

“I’m not taking the little twerp until he learns some manners,” the engineer states, tugging Sokka out of his current stare-down with Jiang (she can’t be like these ashmakers, not when she’s not hiding who she is, she has to be at least human enough to warrant him using her name). He doesn’t know what manners the engineer’s talking about given  _ he’s  _ the kidnapped one here, but frankly, he’d rather not be handcuffed to her either.

The green-eyed boy’s mouth quirks up, “I dunno, Chi, you might be the best teacher.”

“Yes, if we want his eyebrows gone by sundown,” the old man snorts, his moustache twitches with the laughter, and he stretches across the gathering to scratch the bird on its head, “I could take the brat while his highness is out; laundry day, isn’t it.”

Sokka tries not to grimace, or make a face of any kind.  _ Women’s work _ , that’s what they want him doing, of  _ course _ . They’re backwards and they want to make him backwards too, well jokes on them, Sokka has common sense and he knows what they’re doing. Well it isn’t going to work, one of his skills is being incredibly stubborn (according to Katara, but at least if she’s right he can use it against these ashmakers).

The medic hums, “he and General Iroh will be back before the afternoon, so you’ll only need to watch him until then.”

The engineer steps forward, jabbing her finger into the old man’s chest (and he just  _ takes it _ , spirits what is wrong with this place?), “If you let him break anything, and I mean  _ anything _ ,” she hisses, “I will have both your heads.”

“Duly noted,” he says, leaning back as the engineer exits the room and calling after her, “please don’t overheat the water just because you don’t like him!”

“You say that like she likes you any better,” the green-eyed boy snorts, sending a series of chuckles rippling through the crewmates, like the threat of Sokka getting his hands scalded off while his one burn is still healing is  _ funny _ .

After a moment, Jiang offers a small bow to the rest of the group, “the Lieutenant and I will be accompanying the Princes into port, I’ll send someone for when we’re back.” Her voice is a flat kind of soft, just like her staring; Sokka can’t tell if she’s doing it on purpose or not.

The others give her solid nods, and then her almost-comforting green is disappearing into the expanse of grey corridor like everything else seems to. 

Sokka hardly wants to even look at the remaining four, not even when the chef finally offers the bread roll Sokka had smelled when he walked in this morning; he scarfs it down without a thank you.

The medic and the old man cross over to the bed, the latter begrudgingly leaning against the wall beside the pipe with his arm held out, and the former crouching down to pull the jangling keys from her pocket. The switch from chained-to-the-wall and chained-to-an-ashmaker is infuriatingly simple, because Sokka doesn’t even kick up a fuss, he should be, they’re in a spirits-damned port so there are far more chances to actually get his ass off this ship now than there had been the first couple times he’d tried to escape.

But he’s been considering a few things, and while he hates it here, it could be useful. These people are strange, and maybe they’re different from normal ashmakers, but there’s something here, something Sokka can find out to help the war effort. He doesn’t know what they want him for in the first place, and if they plan to use him as leverage against the fleet, against his  _ dad _ , then Sokka needs something to make up for the fact that these monsters will take everything they have left without a second thought.

All because ashmakers know how to use people’s love against them like the heartless creatures they are.

(Of course, that’s assuming these people will even contact his dad, they might just be keeping him around for fun, to mess with. To be honest, if he were them, Sokka wouldn’t want to write a letter to Chief Hakoda either, even with two years lost - that wound is held closed by nothing but shreds of hope - Sokka knows his dad would move a mountain to come and get him. Tui and La if that wouldn’t be the most convoluted way to see him again.)

The medic checks Sokka’s bound wrist and makes a face, something scarily similar to Gran-Gran when she’s assessing someone’s hunting wounds, “if this,” she shakes the shackle and wrist, Sokka’s hand flops uselessly, “starts to irritate your skin, rub a little bit of this and you should be okay,” she reaches into her other pocket and brandishes a little jar of something, a cream whiter than the burn salve she’s been using to treat his hand.

She smiles, that freakishly well-done smile of reassurance, until Sokka’s bandaged hand reaches out and clasps the jar; it fits into his palm with ease. When she crosses the room again, the chef’s eyes light up and he reels to smack her bicep with the back of her hand; she makes a choked noise of surprise, and probably a bit of pain, looking utterly scandalised.

“We should send Lightningbug out to Yamaoka before he gets questioned,” the chef says, quite oblivious to the medic rubbing her arm, “they might’ve sold something to one of his, could point us in the right direction if he’s stubborn.”

“Or clueless,” the black-haired boy adds, throwing his arm over the medic’s shoulders, his height not allowing him to do the same for the chef; the other two nod. Then he gasps and grins, “oh! We should make Runo send back some of those pastries again!”

The medic shakes her head, “nu-uh, not after last time.” 

“I dunno, they were pretty good,” the chef mumbles.

“Don’t encourage him!” She scolds, shoving both of them out of the room and ignoring their pleading expressions, “ _ no _ . You got us docked for  _ three days _ , Zen.” 

Sokka misses who says what after, but the fading  _ I don’t care that everyone had them  _ down the corridor is enough to leave him a little more than confused.

The old man shakes his head, the corner of his mouth twitching upwards beneath his moustache. Whether it's because he sees Sokka staring, or just because he hates him, the old man tugs him up and shakes the chain of the shackles between them.

“Off we go, kid.”

* * *

To call Dusayo a town would be rather generous. It’s a very small settlement built into and around a cove in one of the smallest peninsulas Zuko’s ever come across in all his time travelling. 

To say they’re a neutral port would, also, not be quite accurate, with how small they are, they don’t show up on many - if any - maps, and that’s kept them out of the eye of outsiders for many years. With their position, the mouth of the cove being barely big enough to fit the Wani, it keeps them safe from sudden invasions as well; they’re not quite unaffected by the war, the minuscule population is built from all three nations, but they don’t just let anyone dock.

They’re lucky though, this is Kosuke’s home, and Zuko remembers a time their people were suffering from the effects of a storm, buildings torn down and food sparse. He remembers a lot, and these people do too, so the Wani has been free to dock at Dusayo for the last two and a half years.

It’s quaint, quiet, Zuko’s always liked it. Half the merchants are set up in canal boats that sit along the long wooden docks, ramps weighed down by bags of grain to keep them from giving weight when people duck in to browse wares. A lot of the houses are built in the cliffs, sturdy stone stairs forged to withstand storms, lead up to different levels built by driftwood and fishing net; the mayor lives on the lowest level, easier to get to for most, and faster for him to notice when things are wrong, while the elderly or the vulnerable live higher up, away from the risk of rising tides and floodwaters.

The beach is flooded with children, it’s not an uncommon sight, though some are new faces Zuko hasn’t seen before, and others are much bigger than when he last met them. Kosuke splits from their group to dash over, promptly getting drowned in a pile of screaming children and excitable pre-teens who haven’t seen him in months.

Uncle smiles, and Zuko forces back his own.

“Michi said he needed more rice,” Jiang says, looking down at the scribbled list in her hand while the other toys with the charm on the bracelet Jee wears when they come out. “Kagami also wants more hawk feed, and something for the komodo-rhinos.”

Uncle opens his mouth to say something but Zuko cuts him off, “yes, Uncle, we’ll get more of their tea.” Because the tea leaves here are among Uncle’s favourite, and he has to admit they’re not so bad, for tea.

This is the first time they’ve been back to Dusayo since Jiang joined them, the merchants greet her kindly as they have to every new member of their crew, and Zuko has an easier time looking over their stock with them preoccupied talking to her. 

They get a discount on the hawk feed, because the last time they were here they’d helped the merchant win over the stray cat that now sleeps peacefully on a perch above the counter; it’s tail hangs low enough for Zuko to reach up and pet between his fingers while his Uncle’s distracted asking about something for Sparks.

The tea merchant they buy from likes to play pai sho with Uncle, they get a discount if he wins so Zuko doesn’t complain about the extra time it takes. Plus, the other side of the boat is run by the merchant’s wife, and she sells theatre scrolls and books, always happy to fill him in on new works; sometimes if he smiles, usually by accident, she’ll wink and toss a scroll at him for free.

Treats for the komodo-rhinos come from the same boat they get the rice for Michi, just a few sacks of fruits and cabbages at a haggled price because the thirteen-year-old behind the counter likes to make a game out of bargaining with Zuko; Jee takes an extra basket to drop off in the kitchens (and if Zuko pays for a small pouch of berries for Fireflake, then that’s nobody’s business but his own).

When they’re back onto the dock, closer to the Wani, Michi comes down to drag some of the items back to storage; his organisation system is the only one he understands, so the crew let him sort the room how he needs to. Zuko pockets his berries and keeps a sack of the hawk feed when his eyes catch fish circling the dock supports.

“Jiang! Jiang!” Kosuke comes running up the dock with a giggling eight-year-old hanging from his neck and a slightly older girl clinging to his leg, “the kids keep staring, you should come see them before we have to go.”

The woman flushes, spluttering and caught off guard. Once upon a time, Zuko would have snapped at Kosuke to lay off and leave her alone, but they’ve gotten used to having her here, and they all know to give her a second before deciding if they need to back off or not. Eventually, she smiles, soft and awkward, but nods. 

Then Ichigo saunters past them from absolutely nowhere, face fixed in a scowl until the kid clinging to Kosuke’s leg squeals and scrambles up into her arms. Her smile isn’t wide, not like her brother’s, not quite like Jiang’s, but it's something.

Zuko watches the three wander down the dock to get swarmed, once again, by small, innocent children. He isn’t sure if his thoughts on Dusayo would be considered poor, they always crop up when they visit, but he’s glad this place has avoided the brunt of the war, he doesn’t think he could stand to see it burn.

“I will send our usual gratitude to Xiang,” Jee says, offering him and Uncle a curt bow, “before we set sail.”

Uncle nods, but Zuko hums and tosses a small handful of the hawk feed into the water for the gathered fish, “I think we’ll stay docked until morning.”

“And risk the boy escaping?”

That makes it sound awful, but they’re really only keeping the boy for his own good. Zuko shrugs and looks around, because he isn’t really sure what the boy would do if he managed to get out here anyway, judging by how they even found him, he’s not exactly the finest sailor in the south.

“I believe Prince Zuko has the right idea,” Uncle says, all smiles and kind eyes, nodding towards the beach, “by the time they’re ready to leave, Tui will have risen, it’s much too dangerous to pass through the cove in the dark."

Jee hums, rubbing at his chin before conceding with a nod. Zuko watches him walk away too.

He and Uncle stay on the dock for a while, Uncle makes easy conversation with the merchants on their boat, speaking in his confusing proverbs and laughing heavily at jokes those men tell every time they’re here. Zuko sits at the edge, legs dangling inches above the seawater as he soaks in the sun’s rays as it draws towards mid-afternoon. 

Uncle comes to sit beside him when he’s finished socialising, Zuko watches him scatter another small handful of the hawk feed into the water for the fish. 

Up on the beach, Kosuke has coaxed Jiang to get in the water, he’s getting one of the younger kids up on her shoulders as another scrambles up onto his by himself; Zuko wonders if the flow of Kosuke’s water will beat the sturdiness of Jiang’s earth.

“What is your plan for the boy, Nephew?” Uncle’s voice almost startles him, but he’d been working his mouth to say something since he sat down, Zuko hadn’t been sure what he was going to say.

It’s barely even been a week, is he supposed to have a plan? It’s not like he’d had some organised scheme to pull the boy out of the water, it just happened, and Uncle said it was a good thing he did so what does he want from him now? It’s not like they can just waltz into southern waters just to return a kid who’d been left out there on his own anyway; Zuko doesn’t even think he  _ wants  _ to do that to the guy, no matter what he’s been like with his crew.

“Send a letter to his Chief and take it from there?” It comes out more like a question than he intends, he winces, and avoids Uncle gaze, “he’s already pushed us days back from our original plans, and he sets half the crew off.” 

Ichigo has barely let Kosuke out of her sight since he woke up, and he hasn’t seen Chizue this pissed since Zhao’s last check-in. Everybody else keeps looking to Zuko to do something and he really wants to, but this isn’t like every other stray they’ve picked up, the boy is pretty obvious in his hate, life-saving actions be damned.

Uncle hums, “perhaps we should contact his family?”

Zuko scoffs, “as if he wants his father knowing what position he’s put himself in.” He certainly wouldn’t, he huffs, “he’s just some kid, it’s not going to kill us to send him home. He already owes us a debt, at least if we return him we may have another source for information later.”

“And if he doesn’t wish to cooperate?”

“Then- Then I don’t know, Uncle!”

* * *

Ichigo doesn’t like the Water Tribe boy. She doesn’t know why they can’t just dump him on some poor unsuspecting port and let them deal with his attitude, but then her Captain has never been overly conventional.

Perhaps it’s petty to hate someone on principle, but he doesn’t seem to have much of an issue with them - she’s heard the word  _ ashmaker _ leave his mouth more times in the past week than it has out of anybody they’ve crossed in their travels for the past two and a half years. The boy looks too much like her father too, it makes her unnerved in more ways than she can express; especially to Kosuke, who too many times this week, has wanted to meet the boy no older than their own Captain.

It’s not a safe option. The boy may be Water Tribe, but his kind burn just as brightly as the Fire Nation; less direct, more painful.

If she’d known he was with Taka, she’d have turned left on the lower deck into the stables. Instead, she’d spun right towards the showers, where Kiyotaka does laundry on a schedule he makes himself and tells no one because he finds it funny to watch people get frustrated when they can’t just bathe.

“I just don’t get how you guys don’t have any meat!”

His voice bounces, grating and loud, against the steel walls. He sounds sharp and mean and as she rounds the corner she spies him glaring at their metal tub as if it and the clothes floating in the hot water it's filled with have personally done something to him. 

Kiyotaka snorts, “you’ve been sharing meals with Kagami,” he pulls the wad of clothes out of the tub and dumps them in the boy's lap, he glares harder, but starts wringing the items out into the drains around them, “I’m not surprised.”

“What does the medic have anything to do with that?”

_ Spirits, _ he doesn’t even have enough decency to use their  _ names _ . Taka opens his mouth, probably to run it like he loves to, but Ichigo takes a loud, echoing step into the room and coughs heavily from the back of her throat.

“Not sharing our dear ship secrets, are we Taka?”

He looks at her, deadpan, while the boy’s eyes go wide and his jaw tightens. Taka’s moustache twitches as he grumbles something under his breath; he’s technically her superior, but if there’s anything upheld on this ship it’s definitely not the formalities of position. Not unless the Captain is having a particularly bad day.

The boy watches her differently than he watches the others, she’s noticed. With Kagami and Michi he tends to look almost annoyed, like somehow their unnecessary kindness is an inconvenience to him; with Zenshiro and Jiang he’s mostly confused, for two vastly different reasons, but still confused; Chizue, for the most part, has kept her distance, but she hopes the boy would be scared of her too, because he really ought to be. 

With Ichigo, well, he seems unnerved, he’s probably never seen someone like her or her brother before, and she imagines the molten eyes and fire don’t quite match the image he’d expect from someone with Water Tribe blood, half or not. 

“I don’t suppose you’ve seen my brother.” She doesn’t phrase it like a question, because it isn’t one, she’s well aware of where he is and Kiyotaka knows that.

He spares her a glance, and looks back at the boy watching her with more fear than the first time he’d tried to escape and her hand burst into flames. Good.

“He’ll be visiting the children,” Taka dunks another pile of clothing into the basin, moustache twitching, “you should too. Fresh air will do you good.”

She rolls her eyes, spinning on her heel and throwing a final growl at the boy. He flinches. She leaves.

The beaches of Dusayo are nice this time of year.

* * *

The woman with the scar up her arm scares him, Sokka thinks, not in the same  _ I can hide this behind sarcasm and scowling  _ kind of fear that almost everyone else he’s met has pulled from him, but real, actual  _ I think she wants to murder me _ kind of fear - he thinks its the same fear that would grip him if he had to be alone with the engineer again. 

He feels like he shouldn’t have different kinds of fear here. He’s a warrior, he shouldn’t have fear at all, but his instincts have been out of whack for days and he doesn’t know how to fix them.

The only thing he can really appreciate the engineer and the scarred woman for is not hiding how they feel about him, everyone else feigns smiles and laughs and gentle words, all those two give him are glares and growls and fire. He doesn’t have to work too hard to figure out what they want in comparison to everyone else, and they act how they’re supposed to, like the ashmakers they are, everyone else is trying too hard to seem good that Sokka knows they’re faking it. One of these days the cook will poison his food, or the medic will  _ accidentally _ let him bleed out.

The old man is weird, he hadn’t let Sokka get a word in edgeways before throwing a wet shirt in his face for him to wring out and throw over the warm pipes along the walls. Sokka had vehemently refused at first, going so far as attempting to cross his arms (failing miserably because he forgot his arm was chained this time) and scowling, but the guy just  _ kept piling clothes on _ and eventually it got so uncomfortable he  _ had _ to do something. 

He doesn’t know why this old man does this women’s work so happily, whistling some unfamiliar tune as he scrubs bundles of shirts in warm water; the warmth had surprised Sokka at first, he isn’t quite sure why, but the concept of warm water right out of a spout is… beyond exciting, as much as he hates to admit it. But, that’s beside the point, what matters is that the old man is strange and his greying moustache is more expressive than anything else about him.

How the man had got Sokka talking he doesn’t know, but he thinks there was a mention of food and a mess hall and how the chef was one of the best from the royal palace. Sokka went off on a tangent about how he hasn’t had meat since he got here and the man had laughed and the woman walked in, and Sokka  _ froze _ .

He doesn’t even wind down between her little visit and the chef’s, his shoulders up to his ears, and his senses on high alert that the first set of footsteps back into the room makes him drop the trousers he’s wringing out back into the tub.

“Captain’s ready to speak with him now.” It’s not a tone he’s used to from the chef, but his sunny-smile is still ever-present.

The old man huffs, “send Zenshiro down then.” He pulls the key from his robes and unlocks the shackles on his end, handing it over to the chef as Sokka tentatively gets to his feet.

The chef offers a quick nod and then they’re heading back above deck. Sokka doesn’t know if he’s scared or what, he has no idea what to expect from this Captain, it doesn’t help that the guy is the literal  _ Prince _ of the Fire Nation, he probably eats puppies for  _ fun _ .

His thoughts race faster than they have before, a hundred scenarios flashing behind his eyes about the many,  _ many _ painful ways he could die right now, and he instantly regrets ever thinking staying was a good idea.

Jiang waits outside a door at the top of a set of stairs, her hair damp and tied up in a braided crown beyond the two strands that dangle beside her eyes. She offers the two a smile and a nod, and the chef hands Sokka over quickly, landing a hand on his shoulder and  _ looking _ at him.

“I would recommend not being so confrontational with the Captain as you everyone else, kid.”

Great.

Jiang leads him into a room he hasn’t seen before, it’s well decorated and warm, candles lit on almost every available shelf. In the middle there’s a table close to the floor, a few steaming mugs of something placed on top of it, behind there’s another old guy. Sokka sits when he’s gestured to, Jiang circling behind him and plucking one of the mugs into her hands and leaning back against the closest wall to sip at it.

His mouth is running away without him before he can stop it, “listen, Prince Zuko, that’s your name, right?”

The man snorts into the mug he’d just picked up, beside him Jiang lets out a giggle of her own that sounds like the ice charms that hang above Katara’s bed.

“No, young man,” the voice hits him like a cold wind,  _ the General _ , “that would be my nephew.”

Nephew. Fuck.

On cue, a new person enters. The infamous Prince Zuko…

Isn’t quite what Sokka had been expecting.

In his head he’d built this Prince, the Captain of this ship to be some old, war-torn guy, but instead, he’s  _ young _ . Sokka can’t tell how young because of the absolutely horrid looking  _ burn scar _ that takes up half his face, not to mention one of the stupidest haircuts he thinks he’s ever seen on someone: a bald head with a single plume of a ponytail.

He tries not to stare, but Sokka’s been under the impression ashmakers don’t burn - or that they at least don’t burn  _ easily _ \- and that’s why they set fires everywhere they go without a care in the world. This guy single-handedly shoves that assumption off the edge of a cliff; he really doesn’t want to think too hard about it, if he’s honest, it was probably some training accident anyway.

The turtleduck under his arm should be more of a contrast than it actually is, because Sokka can’t help but notice:

Their scowls match.

Neither the bird nor the Prince are exactly settled before the first question is spoken, “you have a name?”

“Tiger-Seal,” he hisses.

“Chizue says  _ Sokka _ was embroidered onto his parka,” Jiang states. Traitor.

The Prince nods to her. “Who’s the Chief of your Tribe?”

Sokka stays silent.

Jiang, however, does not, “I believe the last time they were spotted, the warriors of the coastal tribe were being led by Chief Hakoda.”

“And where is he right now?”

He finally squawks, “wh- I’m not telling  _ you _ !” 

Because it’s a better answer than  _ I have absolutely no idea _ . Because that isn’t something he wants to consider, the fact that he really has no idea where his own dad is, and hasn’t for almost two years. Because even if he did know, there’s no possible way he’d tell an  _ ashmaker  _ like this guy just so he could send some of his troops to go and round up Sokka’s people like animals.

As if reading his thoughts, the Prince rolls his eyes, “we’re not going after him. We need a path for a hawk.”

“Zenshiro says they sent a hawk for Yamaoka’s ship earlier today.” Back comes Jiang with her helpful additions. Sokka tries not to turn his glare on her

“How delightful,” the General smiles, “I do hope Tomoko is doing well, how big do you think she is now?”

“ _ Uncle _ ,” the Prince hisses, sending a heated glare to the older man (who simply sips his tea and smiles) before rolling his eyes and looking back to Jiang, “send my gratitude.”

She nods, offering a short bow, placing her near-empty mug back on the table,  _ stealing _ Sokka’s (not that he was going to risk drinking it, but the  _ principle _ ), and taking her leave.

His eyes narrow. He doesn’t know what these people are going for with this questioning, it’s certainly not giving him any new information other than they’re somehow so disorganised they’re functional. He’d love to get more, but if they’re just going to dump him on the first set of Water Tribe warriors they can contact, what’s the point? What are they trying to accomplish here?

“Look,” he grumbles, “you know where I’m from, why can’t you just drop me off?”

The Prince glares, “we were under the impression you didn’t want us going anywhere near your village.”

He glares back, “I  _ don’t _ . But if you’re just gonna hand me off to the warriors, why can’t you just circle back and leave me where you found me.”

“We found you in the middle of an  _ arctic  _ river,” his volume has gone up and Sokka sees the general wince, “there’s no guarantee you’d even make it back alive.”

“Then let me walk off at this port and send a letter to my fleet myself!” He raises his own volume to match, so close to standing if he didn’t think the bird would snap at his fingers if he tried.

“And you’ll afford the messenger with what money?”

“Why do you care!?” 

“We didn’t save your  _ life _ for you to go and waste it at your first opportunity!”

“You  _ kidnapped _ me!”

The turtleduck quacks, as if trying to argue its own feeble case.

The Prince sucks in a breath, resting his hand on the animal’s shell and lowering his volume, “if that’s what you want to call me risking  _ my  _ life to pull you out of freezing water, then sure, I kidnapped you.”

“Glad we’re on the same page,” Sokka huffs petulantly, folding his arms, “anything else, your jerkness.”

“I would  _ appreciate _ ,” the Prince’s volume lowers further, almost dangerously so, and Sokka tenses to avoid leaning back, “that while you’re here, you avoid disrespecting my  _ highly qualified _ crew, no matter what your backwater upbringing tells you about them.”

**~#~**

He’s stuck in his room for the entirety of the next day with no visitors and he knows the Jerkbender is doing it out of spite, like the petty  _ asshole  _ he is. 

**~#~**

Sokka’s out on deck for the first time since his initial escape attempt and it’s supremely better than that time, sure he’s chained to the black-haired boy, but that’s better than the ego-reducing headlock that got them the most acquainted.

He’s looked over the view of the cove already, and he’s spent too much time wondering why the people living in such a beautiful, safe place would want a boat filled to the brim with utterly dangerous people staying here for longer than an hour. 

With the weather, and the environment, how it is, it seems that the whole crew bar Jerkbender and his uncle are outside; Jiang had trundled down the gangplank with the scarred woman and her brother earlier. Across the deck the old man is playing pai sho with that Lieutenant guy, the chef lying not too far away from them, arms thrown behind his head and eyes closed beneath the bright sun. The engineer and the medic sit up on the edge of the ship, legs dangling over the water as they converse quietly to each other.

If Sokka’s count is right, the ship only houses eleven people, not including him. That is… all kinds of small.

He sighs, heavy and tired, and the boy eyes him from his peripherals. Sokka eyes him in return, noticing more about him now that they’re forced closer like this. He’s young, younger than Sokka actually expected, from all the time he’s spent standing in the doorway of his room, he looked the same age as the rest of the younger crew members. Sokka spots the light indents of dimples, the one Sokka can see highlighted by a small scar just beneath it.

He narrows his eyes, “how old are you?”

“Hm?” The boy looks down (Sokka  _ hates _ that he looks down) and clicks his tongue, “almost nineteen. How old are you?”

Almost. _Almost_. Why does the _almost_ throw him off so much? Is it because when Sokka responds, “almost sixteen,” he means _not sixteen until next year_? Or because _almost nineteen_ is how old Rono from the fleet would be now?

Green eyes crinkle along with a small grin, if he hadn’t noticed the dimples before, he would now, “our Captain turned sixteen last month.”

_ Spirits _ . Sokka knew ponytail-jerk was young when he saw him, but not  _ that  _ young, not  _ his _ kind of young. That’s not right, it can’t be, sure he’s Prince Zuko or whatever, but he shouldn’t be the  _ captain _ of this ship, not when they have a much older uncle-prince-general  _ right there _ . 

Who in their right mind would put a teenager in charge of a whole crew? Why does the crew just accept that a moody teenager is leading them?

He leans his head back against the wall and huffs again, but his eyes catch sight of something small and dark circling above the ship. Realising, after a moment, that it’s a bird, he smacks the boy he’s chained to in the arm and points up.

“What’s it doing?”

His eyes light up in an instant, bellowing across the deck, “Kagami!” 

The medic looks over, then up, and she brightens too, swinging her legs back onto the deck alongside the engineer and stepping further into the middle. She raises her left arm, a leather arm guard there instead of the metal that wraps her other, and she watches the hawk circle a few more times before sticking her thumb and forefinger into her mouth and releasing a high-pitched whistle.

The hawk dives down instantly, its circle arcing around to line it right up with her arm. Talons dig into the leather and the bearded bird caws upon its successful landing, almost preening with it’s own success.

Sokka’s used to the swan-storks at home just landing themselves, they’re too big to catch and would take anyone down with minor injuries if they even made an attempt. He doesn’t know how heavy the hawks are, but he’s willing to bet they’re not particularly light, especially when they’re carrying extra cargo like the scroll and pouch tied to the neck of the one the medic holds now; he wonders for a second how strong she might actually be.

“Hi girl,” she coos, feeding the hawk a berry as she unties the scroll, handing it over to the engineer, “your brother’s gonna make me have to put her on a diet again.”

A smile actually graces the smaller woman’s face, “I believe your grievances lie with my niece, not Yamaoka.” Unfurling the scroll, she takes a second to read it. Her head tilts and her eyes flash over to him, “Water Tribe spotted sailing east, I’ll run this to the Captain.”

Sokka watches her go without a word, but he sends a prayer to Tui and La that nothing goes to shit.

When have spirits ever listened to him though?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My plea on tumblr has worked, I now know how to do hyperlinks, so you can find my tumblr [here](https://lion-hearts136.tumblr.com/) and it will be linked in the main fic end note to save me doing it every chapter ✨


	4. The Swan-Stork in the Chimney

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nobody sees the outcome my extra outlining had on the chapter count, nobody.
> 
> Right let's be honest, the production time of this chapter has been a fucking mess cause the first week I was doing it I got sick and spent hours staring blankly at pointless youtube videos, then it was Christmas and New Years and I was spending time with my family as I should ✨ and then for all of you who aren't British, well, this week we got the news of a national lockdown and I, a uni student, initially had no idea what I was doing because I didn't have the resources or the space to work from home so I spiralled for a hot second until my university said I could spend lockdown in my accommodation if I needed to, so, while I am by myself now (housemates trickling in slowly if at all) and can only see my family through video calls and such, being here should lower my stress levels a bit because I can get my adhd-brain to do more productive work when I'm here.  
> I'd give you guys a rough, 'expect updates on Fridays' or smth, but I don't want to get anybody's hopes up every one or two weeks, so, I'll aim for every - if not, every other - weekend (somewhere between Friday and Sunday) as an update slot for now, but otherwise, I'll just try not leaving it so long for the next one <3
> 
> On a lighter note, I would like to thank my lovely friend Emi for:  
> a) letting me brainstorm my next Zukka fic at 2am when the idea hit me before I was gonna go to sleep - that's right fuckers, if you don't hate me and my ideas already, I have another beast in the works 💅  
> b) listening to me ramble for an hour and a half at 3 in the morning about the crew and their backstories  
> c) helping me with the structure and scene decisions for this chapter and the next two, I had a bunch of ideas in mind but I was really lost on how and where to stitch them all together to give enough fun info each chapter but also leave enough room for you guys to react to everything happening.  
> d) drawing [THIS PIECE](https://emi-artblock.tumblr.com/post/638490514775261184/fortune-favours-the-bold-chapter-1-solarqueen) of fanart for Chizue which I fucking adore because she's just *mwah*  
> So, big hugs to her and you should all go follow her on Tumblr because she's a wonderful artist and I love her.
> 
> I know there's a lot of characters in this fic, and that can get a little confusing, there's been one request already, but I wanted to check the wider audience about want/need for a glossary of characters. It would just be a small, separate fic (or Tumblr post if that's preferred) that lists everyone and their basic roles/basic personalities, just for everyone to keep track of them; if that's wanted, please let me know ^^
> 
> Also I really hope the word count and content of this chapter make up for leaving you guys hanging for so long-

If someone had told Hakoda two years ago that one day he’d be climbing his ship’s main mast to collect the smuggest-looking Fire Nation messenger hawk from the top of it, he’d have believed them, but not without some uncertainty. 

And here he is, fighting with a rope wrapped around his ankle as the hawk hops  _ away _ from him as if to make his job harder. At least he can note that the birds are the same level of asshole as their handlers. 

As if to add insult to injury, the moment Hakoda gets close enough to reach for it, it swoops off the mast and lands on one of the ship’s railings. It hisses at Snowswirl, despite the swan-stork being over three times its size and likely strong enough to swat it into the ocean, and Silla and Yutu scatter away from it like it’ll set them on fire (Hakoda hopes it won’t).

He sets his head against the mast and sighs - assholes, all of them.

It’s Bato who manages to get the scroll from the back of the hawk, the bird not giving his second as hard a time as it had given him; Aput and Tonraq fail at stifling their laughter as Hakoda clambers back down onto the deck.

His second hands him the scroll, the hawk squawks at them again before taking off back towards its position on the mast, it doesn’t look like it’s going anywhere, but it certainly doesn’t trust them enough to stay on lower ground. The rest of the crew eye it warily, truly like it will cough up a fireball at any moment, so Hakoda thinks everything is in safe enough hands to head below deck with Bato (Yutu seems fully prepared to wrestle that hawk like it’s Splishsplash).

When they enter Hakoda’s quarters, Bato leans against the wall by the door, both paying attention to him, and listening out for any little eavesdroppers that might ‘pass’ in the hallway. 

Hakoda sits at his desk and places the scroll down.

The two suck in equal breaths of anticipation. Hakoda assumes - hopes - this is something about the men that have gone missing from the Southern Fleet recently, none of his tribe, but he knew a few, and perhaps they had given his name instead of the other Chiefs.

That… is not what this is.

_ Chief Hakoda, _

_ -fished one of your men out of the waters in the south _

_ -his name is Sokka _

_ -survived his initial hypothermia and currently only sustains one accidental burn _

_ Prince Zuko, son of Ursa and Firelord Ozai _

_ -P.S. if anything happens to Flashfire, my hawker will have our heads _

His eyes skim over the sentences, the calligraphy infuriatingly perfect as if only to mock what a state things are.

The Fire Nation went to the South Pole. 

They have Sokka, his son. 

They burned his son. 

They’re led by the fucking  _ Prince _ of the  _ Fire Nation _ . 

Hakoda has been threatened by a hawker _. _

He has never felt such a concentrated wave of fear wash over him so quickly. 

Once, when Sokka had been younger, he’d followed Hakoda out to hunt with the other men and fallen through a hole in the snow to a horseshoe-fox burrow; horseshoe-foxes aren’t known for being dangerous, but Sokka had fallen right into their home and, at the age he was, wasn’t quite as careful as he should have been. Hakoda and the men had to search for hours for a bigger entrance to the burrow, but Sokka had ended up finding them by himself with a myriad of scratches and a brave-face that looked one Kya-hug away from cracking.

This feeling dwarfs anything Hakoda had felt all those years ago. 

It’s like falling into ice water and shifting just so that when he tries to float back up all he meets is ice, and more ice, and  _ more ice _ , no escape,  _ nothing _ ; endless cold water that freezes his bones through his skin and his clothes, and traps his breath anywhere but his lungs; endless darkness that shrouds every piece of sunlight in shadows and extends the nothingness beyond his eyes.

Sokka’s in danger. Katara and his mother are likely  _ dead _ . His village has to be gone.

He wasn’t there to save them.

He doesn’t realise he’s stopped breathing until Bato is right across his desk from him and speaking in hushed tones, pulling the scroll from his grip and replacing it with his hands. 

There’s soothing words, controlled breaths, just them in this room. No letter. No danger. No nothing. 

Just them.

Hakoda is a Chief, Bato is his second. As much as they may wish to stay in this bubble of safety, this net of comfort, they have a ship to run and a Tribe they failed to protect.

The letter stays on his desk where Bato left it, crumpled at the sides with indents of Hakoda’s fingers.

When they return to the deck, they return to questions trapped on the crew’s tongues and eyes with barely veiled concern. The hawk sits pruning on the mast and Hakoda glares at it, when it notices it cocks its head, Hakoda only feels anger settle deep into his heart.

He looks to Aput and speaks words he wishes he’d spoken months, years, ago; wishes he could utter them with anything other than strained fear and resignation; wishes he could offer the young navigator more reassurance that things are fine. 

But they aren’t.

“Aput, set our course south. We’re heading home.” 

* * *

Sokka finds himself below deck again, chin propped on his hand as the other swirls a tiny whirlpool into the laundry basin. He hasn’t helped all that much more than he did before, because he still thinks this is a stupid job he shouldn’t be doing as a man (as a  _ warrior _ ), but he’s wrung out the clothes more than he had been because, as evident by the damp patches on his trousers, he needs these clothes dry as much as the rest of the crew does. 

It may pain him to be helping them, but at least he’s less likely to get burnt to a crisp if he sits here and, mostly, fakes it.

The old guy is still… weird, but Sokka finds there might be some sort of solidarity he can have with the guy, because every so often he’ll make a comment about one of the other crewmates that’s far from a compliment.

Plus he gave up being handcuffed to Sokka by their second laundry sessions because, apparently, his arm was getting in the way - now the cuffs hang from one of his wrists.

Every so often, he’ll also pull out and twirl some sort of tile between his fingers. Sokka had braved to ask what it was earlier.  _ White Lotus tile  _ had been the answer he got, and that didn’t explain  _ anything _ but the old man had said it like it should, and then he’d snorted and said:

“I’m too old for this shit, you’re too young, but what can we do.”

Which also didn’t (and still doesn’t) make sense, but Sokka would rather live with the crypticness of it all than risk losing his hand if the old guy decided to heat up the water - if… if he can do that. If ashmakers, at all, can do that, feels too tame, too helpful.

Everything here is too normal.

Sokka hates it.

“When can I have my parka back?” He asks suddenly, pulling his hand from the basin and wiping it dry on his already-wet trousers.

It’s not like he really needs his parka, the ship is practically heated non-stop, but it’s the only piece of home he can feasibly ask for right now with his boomerang missing. He’s more likely to get it because, well, a parka isn’t exactly known to be the most dangerous weapon of all time.

He also just sort of needs a better pillow than he has now, and if he can finagle his way into getting his parka, then he doesn’t have to find out what happens if he asks for something  _ nice _ .

The old man looks at him, deadpan, “you been here, what, a week? And you ask now?”

Sokka blinks, that… isn’t quite the answer he was expecting, but he nods, “yes.”

With a sigh, the man stands, an unhealthy amount of cracking coming from his knees (weak point - noted), and wanders across the room to one of the shower stalls. In the back, one of the tiles moves, an empty, metal space behind it, Sokka watches him sigh again, before his hand becomes a fist and he slams it against the side of the metal space, his voice echoing upwards.

“Hey brat!”

Almost immediately there’s a slam back, this one harder and louder, “what do you want, old man, there’s plenty of hot water!” It’s the engineer, her voice plain as day and Sokka feels his muscles coil.

“The kid wants his parka back!”

“Well send him up to get it himself! He knows where I am.”

The man looks over and shrugs like being alone with that woman isn’t the most terrifying prospect to Sokka on a good day, “you heard her.”

He tries not to look like he’s going with his tail between his legs, but the new knowledge that that engineer works  _ above _ where he does is something he could go back to not knowing. How much shit has she heard him mumble about. How much of that shit was about  _ her _ ?

He finds the boiler room quick enough, the sign he can’t understand still pinned to it’s door, and when he enters he gets a better look at it than he had the first time. 

It’s multiple levels of pure metal, ladders and hatches and holes in the walls dotted around like a complicated, dangerous maze made even harder by the steaming pipes that cross the floors, the air space, the walls. The main furnace, the big one in the centre of the main floor, is where the engineer had been last time; it’s flared up with flames behind a grated door that looks too heavy for someone like her to even be able to pull open without the snaking pipes threatening to trip everyone over at any given opportunity. 

Instead of there, she’s up on one of the higher levels, jumpsuit pant legs pulled a little higher up her calves and strands of hair not in her bun sticking to her forehead as she tugs down some sort of stick in the wall that makes a series of clunking noises all over the room, like some of the pipes have opened up.

Sokka coughs, both to get her attention and to try and ease the dryness to his throat the air of this room brings.

She looks over, not the least bit concerned with his presence as he is with hers, and gives him a once over. She puffs out a breath, either from exasperation at him, or exhaustion at whatever it is she does in here, and stepping over the knee-high pipe in front of her to jump down from her level to his. 

Sokka briefly wonders if she’s ever rolled her ankle doing that. Or if the medic has yelled at her for it.

She looks him up and down again, then reaches behind the main furnace to reappear with a pair of thick gloves that she promptly tosses right at his face, “put those on,” 

He pulls them away from his eyes and looks them over, “uhh…” they  _ look _ big enough for him, but- 

The engineer crosses the room to pull a panel off the wall, the same vent the old man had shouted up from the showers. What is she doing? 

She glances at him again and nods at the gloves without a word; he tentatively pulls them on and tries not to look too worried at the lopsided grin she gains.

She points to a tank next to him, a wheel on either side of it, “twist that valve to the left.”

He does, grunting at the effort it takes to move it even just a little. A sound like water funneling down comes from the tank and the pipe coming out of the bottom rattles a little, weaving around the setup before it disappears into the floor next to the vent the engineer stands at.

A splashing and a scream echoes up from the vent, followed by a yell “ _ you bitch _ !”

Sokka’s eyes widen as the engineer snorts, his mouth hanging open for a moment before he stutters, “is-is he okay?” 

He’s bound to get in trouble for this, what did he even do!?

She wafts her hand at him, “doesn’t matter,” then she leans into the vent and yells, “stop eavesdropping, prick!”

There’s a series of indignant noises that filter up into the room before the engineer puts the panel back where it was and brushes dust from her hands. Sokka stays where he is, hands awkwardly hanging at his sides as he watches her cross the room to one of the cutouts in the wall blocked by pipes.

“Hey, how come you don’t wear gloves?”

“Because I’m fireproof,” she says, deadpan, slipping carefully through the small gap in the pipes and squatting down when she’s on the other side. She points at a red box on the floor beside the main furnace, “now hand me that.”

He does, squatting on the other side of the pipes and sliding the box through the gap by the floor. She takes it and nods her thanks, pulling out two different tools, one with a thin neck that she immediately holds between her teeth, and another wider tool with an arched end that she takes to a big bolt holding some vent-front to a small tank.

He clears his throat, tensing his shoulders when her eyes drift to look at him, “you do… still have my parka, don’t you?”

“Yeah,” she says around the thin-necked tool, exasperated as if she’s been waiting for him to ask this whole time. She drops it back into her hand and turns her head fully, “hasn’t been out of here since we hung it up, thing held water like a damn camel-slug.”

Sokka isn’t sure what a camel-slug is or what it looks like, nor how they hold water, but the grumble in the engineer’s voice is enough to tell him it’s something annoying whatever it is. He nods like he knows what she’s saying, and she rolls her eyes like she knows he doesn’t.

“Gimme a second, I’ll get it for you.”

He swallows, nodding again. He tries to watch her work, but his mind seems to drift to what state his parka might be in by now; did they burn it? Have they torn it to shreds? Did they let their birds get to it? Any outcome isn’t going to be good, he's sure.

The next time he focuses on her she’s closing the panel she’d opened and tossing her tools back in the box to pass back under the pipes to him, waving her hands for him to back up. When he does, taking the box with him, she slips back out of the small space and crosses the room to pull herself up to one of the higher levels, spidering around (what he hopes are) cooled pipes up even higher to grab the blue and white fabric he’s never been so happy to lay his eyes on.

He doesn’t even question why it was up even higher than it was before, he just watches her spider her way back down and land solidly back on the main floor with his parka over her arm.

His  _ intact _ parka. It’s okay.

She hands it over to him with no argument, “it’s a piece of your home, kid, keep it safe; no one wants you to lose it.”

Strangely, he feels like he needs to say something, anything, but he isn’t sure what. There’s a lot he’s needed to say, to every single one of them here, but he doesn’t even know where to start, because everything still feels off and wrong and somehow there’s still a consistent kind streak to almost everyone on this boat.

Sokka doesn’t know what to do with himself, not when he’s faced with everyone acting so much more human than they should be. He swallows.

“Your name’s Chizue, right?”

Her smile is actually softer than anything he’s seen from her since they met, she nods, “It is. You’re Sokka.”

He nods, “I am.”

Somehow they shake hands.

Then an almighty  _ clang _ and a series of squawks reverberates through the room and breaks whatever  _ that _ was. 

Chizue bolts to snuff the main fire and bends out of the way of the smoke and steam that comes from putting it out so quickly. The squawking continues and Sokka realises it’s coming from the  _ chimney _ .

When the air is clear, Chizue sticks her head in the open furnace and looks up, “for Agni’s sake,” she groans, turning and grabbing the dangling end of Sokka’s handcuffs to clamp it around her wrist, “c’mon, looks like your Chief wrote back.”

* * *

It’s Kagami that draws his attention to the swan-stork in the chimney. 

Zuko had been sparring with Ichigo under Jee’s observation, anybody else on deck giving the three of them a wide berth to avoid Zuko’s sweeping flames and the controlled daggers of fire Ichigo swings around. 

It’s as Zuko dodges a slice and rolls across the deck, as he sweeps Ichigo’s legs out from beneath her and is about to end this on a win, that Kagami calls out to him.

“Captain!”

He turns back and she’s already halfway up the ship as is, leaning back against one of the windows of the crew’s quarters with Flashfire hanging onto her shoulder and preening through her ponytail. 

She points back and upwards, towards the main chimney, and it takes Zuko a second to see the squirming bird legs sticking out of the top of it; he mutters a surprised curse and turns back to Ichigo.

“Go get it,” she says before he even asks, “ditch the armour.”

He huffs, standing and nodding, “I know.” 

He loses a lot of the extra weight when he takes off his chest and leg pieces, and it makes the side of the ship easier to scale - almost smooth walls be damned. Kagami pulls him up to where she is when he’s close enough and Flashfire hops from her shoulder to his to rub her head against his cheek.

“Yes, I know, hi,” he snorts, pushing her back slightly to scratch the back of her neck, “you did good.”

Flashfire chirps, one of her wings batting his ear as she takes off back down to the main deck where Chizue has appeared and offered her arm up, Flashfire lands easily. He can already hear Kagami grumbling about the talons digging into Chizue’s exposed skin, but that’s something she can deal with later. 

Besides, Zuko’s slightly more interested in seeing their engineer shackled to Sokka and barely putting up a fuss; when did that happen? The boy was with Taka this morning. But they boy’s parka is tied around his waist and he’s tentatively offering his hand to Flashfire, so, he’s calmer with them, which is good - or he’s calmer with Chizue at least, and Zuko isn’t sure he wants to question that completely just yet.

So, he turns back to the chimney and he and Kagami continue their climb up, giving each other boosts and pulls when they’re on more solid ground than the nearly perfectly-vertical wall they’re having to scale. There’s only a few places to stand when properly up to the top of the chimney, and all of those places require well-practiced balance and precision with steps and movements, because one wrong move will send them tumbling and they don’t have all the resources to deal with that many broken bones.

Avoiding squirming legs makes that entirely harder, and doesn’t even give Zuko room to wonder how the Water Tribe’s bird got stuck (or why they sent one in the first place). 

Either way, it squawks and shifts and Kagami grabs it’s legs without Zuko having to ask; she tries a few placating words that seem to work for a few seconds before the swan-stork starts panicking again. It’s a good thing Kagami has handled animals bigger than this since she was younger.

Zuko pulls himself up to the very top of the chimney, where there’s nothing but the ground beneath him to hold onto, but he checks his balance and shifts closer to Kagami so she can slow his fall if she drastically has to. She spares him a look and then he grabs the bird’s legs too.

They pull up with as much strength as they both have, almost dropping the thing back down when it’s wings get free and almost start flapping (Kagami scolds the thing as quickly as she can with one hand against Zuko’s back).

It rights itself when it’s able to, it’s top half black with soot and smoke, it glares at them like this is their fault before leaving them there to take off down to the deck; from here Zuko can see Chizue and the swan-stork (are they the same height?) sizing each other up as Sokka exclaims something and surges forward to hug it.

Getting back down is much faster than getting up, lots of sliding and letting themselves fall small distances.

When their feet meet the deck Kagami whistles for Flashfire to get back to her shoulder, and she crosses over to pull the swan-stork away from Sokka and down to the stables where she can check it over properly. It tries to put up a fight but the Water Tribe boy manages to placate it enough that it follows her with minimal glaring at her or anyone else. 

She hands him a scroll as she passes.

Zuko taps the paper against his palm as Michi and Jiang come to his side, gesturing to Sokka and Chizue, “keep him with you.”

Chizue nods and tugs the boy back towards the door, “you good?”

Sokka swallows and hums an affirmation, giving Zuko a slightly pleading look, “tell me what he says.”

“I will.”

**~#~**

He doesn’t know what went wrong, but the Chief's letter is  _ far _ from whatever he’d been expecting. It’s filled with thinly veiled threats to their general lives and questions about the South Pole’s wellbeing alongside questions about Sokka despite Zuko thinking he made it quite clear that whatever Sokka’s been recovering from was almost entirely his fault.

He sits around the floor table in Uncle’s room, Michi opposite him with his chin resting on his linked fingers as he reads the scroll laying between them. Jiang’s to Zuko’s left with warm tea with her, her eyes scanning the letter flatly.

“Do you think he’s just as paranoid as the kid, or did I write it that badly?” He asks, grimacing at some of the rushed letters on the scroll.

“I’m not sure,” Jiang hums, nursing her mug between her hands, “he’s clearly rather angry.”

Michi lets out something between a scoff and a laugh, “yeah no kidding,” he shrugs one shoulder, “maybe he’s disappointed Sokka got grabbed.”

“He didn’t get  _ grabbed _ ,” Zuko grumbles, huffing when Michi just looks at him, “but, I suppose as a Chief that might make sense though,” he swallows, “do you think that puts him in danger?”

“Maybe of a few lessons in combat, but otherwise I shouldn’t think so,” Michi says, soft and reassuring even though he doesn’t have to be. 

But Michi knows more about people than Zuko does, so perhaps he’s right - besides, a Chief can do no worse than a parent and as long as Sokka’s father never finds out about this, he’ll be fine.

Jiang takes a sip of her tea and nudges Michi with her elbow, “perhaps you could help writing the next correspondence? Aside from the General, you’re the best with emotional responses.”

Their chef chuckles, “you make yourself sound like a block of wood. But yeah, I can think of something,” he nods at Zuko, “I’ll run it by you first.”

He nods in return, “just make it clear,” he pauses, working his thoughts in circles, “ _ clearer _ , that he’s unharmed. All we need is a dock to drop him off and a guarantee he’ll be safe, that’s all.”

They decide they’ll keep the swan-stork on board for now, take out the risk of the fleet following it towards them entirely, because they cannot be dealing with more people to avoid right now.

* * *

Chizue drags him to the mess hall in the evening, when they get there the medic and the old man are around the only table - a large round one - in the middle of the room and at the back wall there’s a window Sokka can see the chef passing by carrying a big metal pot.

Chizue drags him to the table and drops into the closest seat, the one beside the medic (whom he’s quickly handcuffed too despite the small distance between them), and forces Sokka down into the one next to her. He looks at the two already seated and eating, the old man looks up from his meal and snorts at Sokka and Chizue and whatever state they’re in from working in that hot fucking room all afternoon.

He pouts teasingly, “aw, are the little engineers tired from drowning people in cold water all day?”

Chizue glares at him, “I will scissor-kick you, Taka.”

The chef appears in the next second, placing bowls down in front of them and taking a seat beside Sokka, “please save the violence for anywhere other than my  _ lovely _ mess hall.”

The arguing pair give him equally energetic middle fingers and the chef rolls his eyes but doesn’t seem phased.

Sokka looks down at his bowl, it’s different from what he’s been having outside of this room, he doesn’t realise until he takes the first bite that it’s because there’s  _ meat _ in this dish, real, actual meat.

“How come everytime I just ate with you I wouldn’t have  _ this _ ?” He exclaims at the medic, she pauses her next bite and stares at him.

“I’m a vegetarian?” Like that was obvious. “And you didn’t say anything, Michi figured you liked it.”

“Well I  _ did _ ,” he doesn’t know why he feels the sudden need to not offend the man who feeds him, but it’s not like he’s lying, “but this is so much better. Why would you  _ ever _ be a vegetarian?”

Chizue whacks him on the arm and he whines, but the medic just giggles and shrugs.

“Family tradition.”

Somehow Sokka’s not sure if he believes that, but she laughs at whatever expression he pulls and goes back to eating. He does too, albeit a little slower, savouring the meaty flavours where he can and watching the old man and Chizue both retire to bed when they finish.

The chef disappears into the kitchen at some point, returning not a moment later with a lidded tray in his hands, he grins at the two of them, “twins’re on night watch,” he says, “gotta keep ‘em fed.”

Then it's just him and the medic left at the table, an empty seat between them and Sokka coming to the end of his meal; the chain between them rattles with their breathing, and he speaks before he can convince himself not to.

“Is Featherweight okay?”

She looks at him, “the swan-stork?” He nods, she does too, “yeah she’s fine, cleaned her feathers, gave her plenty of water, she’s not too stressed from the looks of things.”

“Could-” he swallows, pushing his shoulders back. He doesn’t have to ask to see his own bird, “I want to see her.”

“Sure, I think she’d like that.”

He blinks, “wait really?”

“Yeah,” that was easy, “it’ll do both of you some good.”

**~#~**

Breakfast the next morning is kind of quiet. The only people at the table are him, Chizue, and the medic; the chef - Michi? He feeds Sokka that’s worth something - had placed their bowls down and left pretty quickly.

The women make easy conversation with each other, they mention that  _ Yamaoka _ again and someone named  _ Tomoko _ but Sokka doesn’t know who they really are nor if he really wants to know. Chizue complains about having to fix something in the main engine by herself today, since Sokka will be down below deck with the medic, she can’t make him help her again.

“You could ask anyone, Chi,” the medic says, “you know we’d all help out if you wanted us to, the Captain would probably make them if he knew you were having this much trouble.”

But Chizue shakes her head, “it’s not  _ trouble _ , this ship is just old and we can’t find parts for her everywhere so it’s harder for me to patch her up. I can do it, with or without help, I just don’t trust anybody else in there to give me that help.”

“You trust me?” Sokka asks, incredulous and around his food (that he swallows as fast as possible when both women give him equal looks of disgust).

She shrugs, “you do as you’re told.”

He raises an eyebrow, “is it because I’m tall?”

“I will have you know, I am the perfect height.”

“In what world?”

“In a world I’m standing next to her.” She points directly at the medic.

“You’re below her shoulders!” Sokka exclaims, hands flying up, “you can’t even make eye contact!”

“Maybe not with her eyes-”

“Chi!” The medic squawks, inhaling around some kind of laughing fit, “please, he’s just a baby.”

Sokka gasps, “wh- I am not a baby!” 

Whatever else they yell at each other is lost on him, especially when he realises he’s humouring them again and he finds all of this funny; he starts overthinking then too, and his thoughts are going so fast he can barely keep up with them enough to pluck and brush the fog away from them to even see what any of them are.

He follows the medic down below deck, his feet moving on muscle-memory he shouldn’t have, so much so he almost turns into the showers until she tugs him down her hallway and they enter the side of the ship he hasn’t seen yet. It’s not what he expects at all.

Realistically, he’s not sure what he expected, maybe something smaller, but this room holds all of the animals and it’s sized for that purpose completely. The floor is littered with hay moved all over by komodo-rhinos moving from a larger hay pile to their individual stalls set up in a three-sided-square at the furthest wall; Sokka can see a few of them sleeping with their tails wrapped around them like a polar dog.

Up along the walls there are a bunch of shelves and perches the messenger hawks pass between, one of them sleeping in a crudely made nest, a couple others watch them from perches, pruning their wings and chirping at them. The last one Sokka doesn’t even notice until it pokes its head up from one of the rhino stables and clicks once before disappearing again.

The medic smiles, “Summerstorm likes to babysit the others when they’re sick, Flora’s had a bit of a cold the last couple days.”

Sokka nods mutely, these guys and their name choices.

His eyes ghost to the other side of the room, gaze finding Featherweight floating happily in a large pool of water, that turtleduck chittering beside her. 

Given the water trough and pool are made from washbasins in better condition than the one they use for laundry, and all of the stalls, shelves and perches are made from wood and not metal, Sokka has to guess this room wasn’t exactly an animal sanctuary when the crew got the ship.

And there goes his mind again, running in circles because these people are even nice to their animals and terrible people are so rarely mean to animals, especially this many, especially those from ships not their own. 

Featherweight looks calm, if a bit curious about the shelled duck floating next to her.

“Hey, you okay?” The medic comes to stand in front of him and he notices they’re not tethered by the shackles anymore.

“Oh no, I’m fine,” he huffs, taking a step back even as she raises her hands, “I’m just being held captive by the people destroying the world,” his hands come to his hair, “and I think they’re brainwashing me to like them and I hate it because I shouldn’t like them.”

She doesn’t touch him, but she does steer him towards the pool where Featherweight is, keeping her voice that soft and gentle tone she keeps using with him, “we’re trying to get you home, Sokka, we’re not trying to hold you captive.”

“You’re Fire Nation you would say that,” he grumbles.

“I’m not-“ she cuts herself off, whatever it is she was going to say. Instead she settles him on the floor beside the pool, “you’d be getting treated far worse if you were a prisoner, trust me.” 

He tries to ignore the way she says that last bit, focusing on Featherweight as she cranes her neck over the side of the basin to rest it on his shoulder; he runs his fingers through her feathers and wonders how the men are. 

The turtleduck doesn’t even hiss at him when it peaks over the basin edge too.

“Stay here,” the medic orders, “I’ll be doing maintenance so just don’t get in the way.”

He nods, fingers nestling further into Featherweight’s feathers, “okay.”

He watches the medic circle around him, unclasping her arm guards and placing them on a clean shelf above the water pool; she works quickly, efficiently, it makes him wonder how often she’s done this, but after the arm guards come the other smaller pieces of armour on her torso and then her shirt, leaving her with simple bindings.

Sokka’s eyes widen.

“You can get away with more stains on your trousers than you can your shirts,” she says, folding the fabric into a square to place next to her arm guards on the shelf, “plus Taka won’t moan at me about more laundry this way.”

But that’s not why he’s staring, not even slightly, and she  _ has  _ to be well aware of that. The first thing he notices is the giant burn on the left side of her lower back, stretching out across her spine and around her side, the end disappearing slightly beneath the band of her trousers; it’s bigger than the Prince’s, but they have similar shapes, a similar fade in colour. The other unavoidable thing are the white lines on her back, they’re old but they’re prominent, even against her pale skin; the long ones are the ones he sees first, but then there’s others that catch his eye, small and harder to see, but still there.

She said to trust her.

Sokka swallows.

Maybe he should.

He tries not to watch her as she sweeps up scattered hay and hawk feed, tries to let her get on with giving Flora her medicine and scrubbing the other rhinos clean. She looks back at him every so often, where Featherweight has almost fallen asleep against his shoulder, and the turtleduck - Fireflake, right? - nibbles at one of his fingers (it doesn’t even hurt, she doesn’t even have teeth), he tries not to be staring when she does that either.

But every so often they make eye contact and she shifts to hide her back; not because she’s ashamed of it, but because she can tell he doesn’t know how to process it.

A new distraction comes in the form of the Water Tribe looking boy.

He saunters in like the tension in the room doesn’t exist, gliding through like a hot knife to butter. He waves happily to Kagami and she waves back with her own little smile and then he makes complete eye contact with Sokka and marches over stiffly, sticking out his arm when he’s closer.

“I’m Kosuke.” 

Sokka blinks, nudging Featherweight off his shoulder (much to her chagrin) and standing to properly face the man, “um… Sokka.” He hesitates lifting his arm for a moment, aiming for Kosuke’s hand before his forearm is clenched instead.

This guy knows Water Tribe customs. Sokka grips his arm tighter.

They pull away when Featherweight splashes water over them with one of her wings.

Across the room, Kagami lets out a startled laugh, while Sokka throws a glare back at a bird who looks far too pleased with herself. What he doesn’t expect is for him to be dry in the next second.

His head whips around and he watches Kosuke  _ pull the water _ from his own clothes and group it into a sphere of ice between his hands.

Sokka gapes, “you- you’re a waterbender!”

“I wasn’t supposed to do that!” The ice ball tumbles from his hands as he realises what he just did, shards spreading across the floor as it shatters on the ground.

“You’re a waterbender and you’re  _ here _ .”

Kosuke looks a little helpless, “well I’m not gonna live in a Pole, I’m  _ tropical _ .”

“That’s not what I meant!” Sokka yells, throwing his hands out, “why are you all so  _ weird _ !?”

“We’re not  _ weird _ , we’re normal!”

“Boys.” They both look back and Kagami’s watching them, eyebrow raised and a hand on her hip. “Ko, you’re twenty-six, please don’t pick fights with teenagers.”

He pouts, “he called us weird.”

She shrugs, “maybe we are. We certainly have to be a little crazy to be in this crew, don’t we.”

Okay, Sokka’s going to take a minute to process everything; half the people on this crew he hasn’t seen a lick of flame out of, and that either means they’re really good at hiding being firebenders, or they’re non-benders; there’s Jiang, very clearly Earth Kingdom, and then Kosuke and his sister a mix Sokka never thought he’d see, and the two of them bending opposing elements. None of this makes sense, really, not when he has no picture to go off of, nor any possible reason for what the fuck is going on with these people and why they’re following a Prince - part of the literal family that put the world at war - around the world.

It doesn’t even answer why they were far enough south to pick him up.

“Why  _ are _ you in this crew?”

Kagami studies him for a moment, crossing the room, “some people just got picked up for a ride and decided not to leave,” she reaches around him to grab her shirt, “some people needed shelter,” she pulls the fabric on and the warzone of her back disappears, “and some of us answered a call for help from old friends.”

Kosuke nods resolutely, clearly in agreement, “I promise we’re not like the people you think we are,” his smile reminds Sokka of the men with his dad, “and Prince Zuko is the most honourable man I have ever met. We’ll get you home, one way or another.”

Kagami winds her arm around his shoulders and Sokka finds he doesn’t mind, “the Captain just doesn’t want to lose any of us in the process.”

**~#~**

“What are we doing?”

It's been a few days, and Sokka has been dragged off the ship, handcuffed to  _ Zuko _ of all people, and they happily sauntered  _ past _ the port and into the trees up to some waterfall with a big enough pond for fish to be living in. Sokka can see the colours of their scales under the surface of the water, but he still wants to know why he’s out here.

The Prince looks at him like it’s the most obvious thing in the world, “fishing.”

“With the market  _ right there _ ?” He waves his hand down the hill for emphasis.

Zuko rolls his eyes, “they’d take one look at you and charge you double for no other reason than you wouldn’t question it.”

“Wh- hey! You’d be there!”

“I would  _ not  _ be,” he scoffs, almost laughing incredulously, “did you  _ see _ the Fire Nation guards everywhere?”

“What?” Why would Fire Nation guards be a problem for a Fire Nation Prince?

“Can you fish or not?” Zuko huffs, “I could go get Ichigo if you’re not up for it, spirits, I bet Fireflake could fish better than you,”

One of these days Sokka will not fall for the goading everyone does to get him to do something.

Today is not that day.

“I can do it!” He yells, rolling up his sleeves and his pant legs to wade into the water, “watch and learn Jerkbender, you’re about to see the finest work of the best fisherman in the whole of the Stag-Wolf Tribe.”

Zuko follows after him without much argument, “are you, or are you not, one of the only fishermen there?”

“That’s not the point!”

The nets they’re using are one’s Michi gave them, Sokka should have asked where they were from because they’re not  _ bad _ , but they’re not exactly what Sokka would suggest using to fish, some of the holes are too big for the fish being as small as they are.

But he makes do, because he is the  _ best _ fisherman. 

“Can I ask you something?”

Zuko side-eyes him, “...sure.”

“What’s with the hair?” He gestures vaguely at the weird bald-ponytail thing he has going on.

Zuko purses his lips, “It’s- uh- it’s a symbol, I have to wear it like this for a reason.”

Sokka narrows his eyes, looking the boy up and down, “shouldn’t they let royals be the most attractive they can be for the whole… heirs thing?”

Zuko huffs and backs up, “even if that  _ were _ the case, my father would never let me have any heirs to begin with.” 

That gives Sokka pause, is Zuko not the oldest in his lineage? Maybe he’s mixing up what he knows about royal families since the Tribes down south don’t really work that way. But even then, the comment feels off, and it shouldn’t, because Sokka barely knows Zuko.

“You let your fish go.”

“Huh-ah!”

The only reason Sokka doesn’t make a break for it is because the village is swarming with Fire Nation soldiers. That’s it.

**~#~**

Michi meets them at the gangplank when they get back, throwing their net of fish over his shoulder and carrying it like it’s nothing - damn him and his shoulders. 

He and Zuko follow him back to the mess hall where everyone else is, gathered around the main table like always with Kiyotaka leaning so far back on his chair it’s almost worrying, Jiang with both her legs crossed on her seat, Chizue and Zenshiro with their legs thrown up onto the table, and the others scattered in various states of formality.

Kosuke stands at the head, a bundle of papers in his hands. He turns and grins at them as they come to the table, Michi passing by to drop the fish in the kitchen, and Sokka and Zuko taking seats between the General and Zenshiro.

“Some soldier saw my uniform and just gave these to me,” the waterbender beams, holding up the papers, “everyone remember your bets.”

Sokka raises an eyebrow, watching as everyone - even the royals - pull various sized coin pouches out of their pockets and place them on the table. He has no idea what is going on, but the looks they’re all sending each other are like their sparring expressions, friendly competition, and that only serves to make Sokka more curious.

Kosuke’s grin grows wider, a snort stifled behind his teeth as he places the first paper down.

The first thing Sokka registers is the giant  _ WANTED _ on the top in freshly-printed, bold letters, the next is the obscene amount of gold wanted for- wanted for Zenshiro!? He almost does a double-take, because the name on top of the paper is definitely Zenshiro, but the picture...

“I knew it!” Chizue exclaims, legs leaving the table and her chair slamming back onto the floor, “told you it’d be the nose this time.”

Zenshiro makes an offended gasp, his own chair slamming down as he lunges forward and snatches the poster, flipping it around to hold beside his head as if to compare, “do they think I’m half elephant-rat!?” He looks to Sokka imploringly as if he has any idea what this is all about, “first the ears now my nose! Are they even  _ trying _ to catch me?”

There’s a series of questions on Sokka’s tongue, all of them trapped behind pure shock as his mouth opens and closes like a fish out of water. Either the crew don’t know what’s going on in Sokka’s head, or they don’t care and just like seeing him short-circuit.

So first the weird soldier and dad comments from Zuko, now Zenshiro’s a fugitive?

“Who cares, I won this round, kid, hand it over,” Chizue grins, holding out her hand until Zenshiro, Michi,  _ and  _ Kiyotaka hand over their coin bags. She happily pockets the pouches and looks back up at Kosuke, “they have anyone else?”

The next wanted posted Kosuke places down is one of his sister, the name Ichigo printed on top with a higher reward than Zenshiro and the most accurate image Sokka’s ever seen of anyone.

Zuko catches the pouch Kosuke tosses him with one hand, barely looking up from the poster on the table; across the table, Kosuke’s sister drops hers into Jiang’s hand.

“Oh okay, I see how it is, they get Ichigo  _ perfect _ ,” Zenshiro whines, folding his arms and leaning back on his chair.

The woman in question leans across the table to flick his forehead, “obviously it’s ‘cause I’m hotter than you.”

“You’re older than me! I have time to grow!”

Kiyotaka places a placating hand on the boy’s shoulder, “you’re hot too Zen, don’t listen to her,”

“Thank yo- hey!”

The table erupts into laughter and despite Zenshiro’s huffing, Sokka can see him fighting against the upturning of the corners of his mouth.

Kosuke places another poster down without anyone asking, biting his lip as the others begin to notice and let out different volumed cheers; Sokka can barely catch a glance at it, but the picture doesn’t look human, if anything, it looks like a mask.

“The Blue Spirit looks more haunting than usual,” the General comments, looking a mix of proud and curious at the high-bounty on the poster.

Sokka is going to pretend he doesn’t see the Lieutenant’s coin pouch disappear into the Dragon of the West’s sleeve.

Kagami laughs, “well, if I remember correctly, the last village he was spotted at he freaked the guards out pretty thoroughly,” she leans into the table to grin at the Zuko, “didn’t he, Captain.”

“That’s what I heard,” he hums, passing Kosuke’s money bag between his hands and leaning a little backwards in his chair.

Sokka doesn’t know what this  _ Blue Spirit _ is, but if he isn’t fucking curious now.

“Should I go out there and show them what I actually look like?” Zenshiro asks, jumping up onto the table.

The Lieutenant rolls his eyes, “they’ll chase you to the next port.”

“It’s nice to be wanted.”

“Not by the law!”

Sokka hasn’t heard this much laughter in a long time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I would like everyone to know, I tend to go a little harder on angst and complexities and stuff, but I've toned down a bit for the sake of the Teen rating (everyone thank Effie ✨) and generally to have a bit more fun with this; a few things are planned to be a little rougher later but this is generally a pretty lighthearted fic from start to finish hence the not crazy nuanced pieces and minimal angst bumps  
>  ~~now the other fic I've been planning... a few more bumps~~
> 
> In case anyone was curious, the crew shares two braincells; Kagami, Jee, and Iroh are the ones that hog them  
> \- Sokka and Zuko, if they're lucky, can form a single braincell when they're with each other  
> \- Chizue, Ichigo, and Kiyotaka can get away with borrowing a braincell for maybe two hours before they're required to give it back  
> \- Michi and Kosuke don't need a braincell to have a good time  
> \- Zenshiro never does good things when he has a braincell so he's banned  
> \- Jiang brought her own braincell and she isn't sharing


	5. The Question of Loyalty

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> EMI DREW ZEN GUYS - [HERE](https://emi-artblock.tumblr.com/post/640415968426901504/fortune-favours-the-bold-chapter-4-solarqueen)  
> Go give her more love, she deserves it
> 
> Random life tidbit; my flatmate told me I have a whole extra week to get an assignment done I thought I had to finish by Thursday and when I tell you the RELIEF I felt - palpable.
> 
> Me last chapter: Yeah I'll try and update during the weekends  
> Me this chapter: Uploads it on a Tuesday at 2am 'cause I just finished  
> Also, guys, I haven't written action sequences in forever so please be kind to me about the ones in here cause I'm getting back into it okay 😭
> 
> Though for finishing this chapter I will now allow myself to read the TAOB update when I wake up later 🙏

It’s the night shift, the air cold and quiet between them, the sky is hidden by a dark cloud cover, and the ocean laps against the side of the Wani as it trundles through the water.

Kosuke picks at the skin on his knuckles, looking up at the covered gleam of Tui hanging over them, protecting them, he hopes. Ichigo is beside him, bouncing a small lick of flame between her fingers with her back against the wall; his eyes ghost the scar against her neck, her scratched up hands, and he looks at his own clean skin.

“You haven’t been sleeping.” It’s supposed to be a concern, but he knows it stumbles out like an accusation, a direct attack on the dark circles beneath her eyes.

Her flame disappears and her hands clench, the aged scars stretch along her fingers, “I’ve been on watch with you.”

“You shouldn’t be.”

The glare she’d had piercing the deck suddenly turns on him, “why not?”

He raises his hands carefully, “you’re a firebender, you can’t sleep when the sun is up, you shouldn’t be spending all the time you can sleep out here with me.”

Her jaw clenches but she doesn’t say anything; she’s being stubborn, they both know, she hasn’t been like this since Jiang joined the crew, but- Sokka’s room, the empty officer’s room on the Captain’s floor, he suddenly remembers that it’s above her room. Having him that close, that close to  _ Zuko _ -

“He’s really not that bad, y’know,” Kosuke broaches carefully, reaching out and squeezing her hand, “he’s just a kid.”

She doesn’t squeeze back, “we know what kids are capable of.”

The Captain’s a kid, Zenshiro was a kid when they met him - still  _ is _ a kid, really - everyone on this ship, in this world, is a child of war. 

Sometimes he forgets he’s the only adult here with clean hands; the universe never handed him a bloody, weighted deck to work with, Ichigo took all his stained cards when they were children, he never thought to do that for her. No one had done it for the others, not until they were here and could throw their past decks in the ocean in favour of a new one gifted by their Prince.

He swallows, “maybe, but, he seems too uncoordinated for that,” he tries to laugh but it comes out dry, strained, “Chi trusts him.”

“No she doesn’t,” Ichigo counters quickly, just barely holding back a roll of her eyes, “she trusts Kagami’s judgement, but she’s keeping an eye on him.”

“Do you not?” That’s a question with an obvious answer -  _ not in this situation _ \- she doesn’t even humour him with a response, so he pivots, “he’s been scared, I think we’ve been getting somewhere with him.”

She scoffs, pulling her hands away from him and folding her arms, “what? By bearing rightfully hidden secrets to him he could quite easily use against you,” she pushes off the wall and takes several steps further onto the deck just to spin and throw her arms out, “what do you think his little Southern Fleet buddies are gonna do when he tells them you’re a waterbender.”

He huffs, “I can take care of myself, Ichigo,”

“There’s more of them than there are of you.”

“That doesn’t mean I’d go anywhere quietly,” he runs a hand through his hair, “I’m not eleven anymore, and I know you’re still here for me.” 

She turns away from him then, the flame between her fingers burning just a bit brighter. 

He’d hoped befriending the boy would calm her down a little, but it seems to have done the opposite and he probably should have expected this.

“I get why you’re scared, but I really don’t think you have to be.”

“I’m not scared of a  _ kid _ .” 

Lightning crackles above them.

* * *

Breakfast in the mess hall is almost completely different when everyone is here. Sokka’s not even cuffed, the shackles lay at the other end of the table in front of Kiyotaka and he nudges them over when he tries to steal Kagami’s portion of eggs (almost getting his hand stabbed by a fork in the process). 

Beside him, Chizue shovels down rice; across from him, Iroh sips a mug of tea; between the General and Kiyotaka, Jee’s been roped into helping a half-asleep Zenshiro pull a stubborn knot out of his hair; Zuko’s by Michi’s window to the kitchen, talking with Jiang as she helps clean dishes.

Everyone is talking about different things to the people closest to them, it’s loud and chaotic, and everyone at the table, at least once, tries to steal something from each others’ plates after Kiyotaka’s failed attempts. 

Sokka’s no stranger to using cutlery as a weapon.

He does notice the twins eating by the door, not at the table and not even making conversation with each other like they normally do when together. Kosuke tries to smile when Sokka glances over but he looks about ready to go to his quarters and sleep until the afternoon. Ichigo is glaring at her food like it personally offended her, and though she looks tired, she doesn’t seem to be as dead on her feet as Kosuke.

Sokka doesn’t dare say a word about it until the two have left, independently of each other he notes, “they seem a little… distant.”

“Ichigo doesn’t trust you and she’s mad Kosuke does,” Kiyotaka says, unabashed as he makes a swipe for Jee’s eggs this time.

“Oh.”

“She’ll come around eventually,” Kagami says, reaching around Chizue to squeeze his shoulder, “if it’s any consolation, I think it’s more than just  _ you _ .” 

But it  _ is _ him. He isn’t sure why he’s even slightly put off by the fact that one of these guys dislikes him, it’s not like  _ he  _ likes  _ them _ .

Zenshiro yawns and runs a hand through his now knot-free hair as Jee turns to smack Kiyotaka and take his eggs back; “she took six months to even consider staying in the same room alone with any of us when she joined,” he stuffs a spoonful of rice into his mouth, “so, you’re not unique.”

“Oh?”

Chizue shrugs, “she’s usually extra wary of anybody new we’ve brought on board since then though. Took a fight to get her to like Jiang.”

“The island did not deserve what they did to it,” Iroh hums, doing that disappointed-but-also-super-amused tone of his.

Sokka nods, chewing on a mouthful of fish as a question springs to mind, “where did Jiang come from, anyway?” The others raise an eyebrow at him and he swallows his food to raise his hands up, “I mean- no offence, it’s just, she doesn’t exactly fit in.”

Jiang places a bowl down and sits on the other side of him, “I believe I fit in perfectly well.” He does  _ not _ yelp. She smiles slightly, “I transferred from Yamaoka’s crew when they needed a new information source.”

There’s that name again.

“Who  _ is _ Yamaoka?” He finally asks, “I’ve heard you guys mention him  _ a lot _ .”

“Chizue’s little brother,” Michi says, coming to the table to sit beside Jiang, Zuko following after to sit between him and his uncle. “He’s a merchant, sells a bunch of shit from every nation and sends us info when we need it.”

“And nicest of the three of them,” Jee comments off-handedly from across the table, leaning over to Iroh to pour himself a mug of tea.

“There’s  _ three _ ?” Sokka squeaks, head whipping around to face the woman in question as she laughs around her utensil.

“Yep,” Zenshiro grins, suddenly more awake than he had been before. He holds his hand up, counting on his fingers, “Soma, Chizue, and Yamaoka. Chi’s the middle kid, can you tell?”

He narrows his eyes, what does that even mean? “I only have a little sister.”

Spirits.  _ Katara _ . He feels like he hasn’t thought about her in  _ weeks _ , too busy worried about his own hide to even  _ think _ about what she’s been doing this whole time.

Michi nods like he understands, “they can be a handful.”

Jiang pours herself a tea and offers him one too. For the first time, he nods, her eyes light up just that little bit and he wonders if this is her way of extending friendship; maybe she’s just trying to cheer him up.

“Jee and the General are the only ones who have met Soma,” Chizue says, something hard in the way she says her own sister’s name, “I’d prefer to keep it that way.”

That seems… rough. Sokka doesn’t know how he’d feel if Katara ever said his name like that, but he’s slowly realising the situation with the Fire Nation is vastly more complicated than he ever considered. A difference of opinions could mean everything to them.

“So… merchant Yamaoka, he’s, like, allowed everywhere?” Sokka asks instead of prying.

“His wife, Kyoh, she’s from Ba Sing Se, plus the rest of their crew, smaller than ours, are from all over,” Kagami explains, “they tend to have someone for everywhere, plus, working out of a decommissioned navy ship usually turns enough heads to get sales.”

“How’d the Fire Nation-Earth Kingdom thing happen?”

Chizue chuckles, “she went travelling, her boat got upturned, he was sailing around and saved her, they decided to work together and voila. Now I have the best little niece, and we don’t have to spend weeks sailing for nothing.”

“Kinda like what happened to you and Zuko,” Zenshiro snorts.

Sokka and the Prince scoff in unison, “not in a million years.”

“You’re gonna look at me and you’re gonna tell me that I’m wrong?”

“I’ve heard La’s a sucker for a bit of romance, sometimes more than Tui.” Michi’s voice is three octaves too high and he nudges the boy beside him with a grin.

“Well, La can keep his romance away from  _ me _ ,” Zuko huffs, rolling his eyes.

Sokka is  _ not  _ about to take that lying down, “I would make a lovely boyfriend!”

Chizue and Kagami make equal screams of laughter.

**~#~**

They’ve docked again, except this time it’s not at a town, or a village, or even a  _ port _ . No, they’re on an island that doesn’t even have a  _ dock _ , the gangplank is just settled into the sand of the beach and Sokka stands on deck watching Kagami lead the komodo-rhinos off for some fresh air.

“Uh, where are we?” He asks, raising an eyebrow at Zenshiro who sits on the deck wall next to him.

The boy shrugs, “some island we come to every so often.”

So, unmarked, great.

“We’ve been trying to name it since we found it,” Chizue says, twisting her hair up into her bun as she comes up behind them, “but the first name anyone came up with was Zuko-topia and the Captain has refused to listen to us since.”

Yeah… that definitely sounds like a very Zuko thing to do. 

Sokka only hates himself a little bit for knowing that.

“And what are we doing here?”

Chizue sighs, “ _ I _ have to go become a badgermole and make repairs before we’re stuck in the middle of the ocean.”

Sokka pushes away from the wall and crosses over to her, “great, let’s go.”

“Hold your ostrich-horse, kid,” her hands clasp his shoulders and she really looks at him, “you can’t come with me today

“Why not?” Ew, why did he just sound like a child?

“Because I’m going to the engine room.”

Zenshiro snorts, “damn, Chi, a few weeks ago he didn’t wanna be anywhere near you,” he swings his legs over the wall and plants them back on the deck, “now look at him.”

“Shut up!” Sokka yells, only serving to make Zen laugh harder. He turns back to Chizue, “look if you’re worried about me stealing schematics for this thing, I promise I won’t.”

“First of all, that’s a bald-faced lie,” she states, raising her eyebrow, “second of all, this ship isn’t nearly up to date enough for anything you steal to be worth shit,” she taps him on the nose and Sokka’s sure he makes a disgruntled face, “third of all, the space I have to get into is small and you’ll lose an arm down there; I’m not the medic for a reason.”

He huffs. So, she’s right about that first bit, so what? And yeah, maybe that second comment made him a little confused and curious, that’s nothing new. And maybe that last part is only slightly terrifying, what about it?

He folds his arms, “well what am I supposed to do when we’re not even docked at a town?”

Zenshiro throws his arm over Sokka’s shoulders and Sokka tries not to look too irked with the amount of weight he has to hold now - but Chizue’s fingers press against her mouth and he has to wonder if he’s only making himself look more ridiculous.

“Either come foraging with me, Michi and Taka, or hang out with the others,” Zenshiro says, “we’ll be docked for a couple days anyway.”

He sighs, “why couldn’t we have just docked somewhere more interesting?”

“All the closest docks are Fire Nation, so, a no go. And this place is plenty interesting, mostly ‘cause of us but-”

Sokka ducks under his weight and watches him pinwheel his arms to keep himself upright. That works well until Chizue kicks her foot out and sends him sprawling onto the floor with a grunt; she squats down beside him and they look at each other for a moment, Sokka watching the interaction from a distance.

Then she  _ picks him up _ . Chizue lifts Zenshiro primarily by his collar and throws him over her shoulder to march back over to the deck wall, placing him there facing towards them.

“Any last words?”

He stares at her, deadpan, “if your reputation didn’t precede you, I’d tell you you’re bold for trying to kill me.”

Her stare is equally deadpan, “perish.”

She pushes him.

Sokka doesn’t mean to gasp, it pulls itself out of him as he watches that black mop of hair disappear behind the wall and listens to the heavy splash from the water below. His mouth hangs open as he stares at Chizue, and she watches him for a moment before her mouth quirks upwards.

“Don’t you dare-” he points at her and backs up, she takes one step and he immediately screeches, “I can’t swim!”

She raises her hands but she still looks like she wants to. Keeping them raised, she comes towards him and claps him on the shoulder, “the day you  _ can _ swim, you will not escape me.”

Tui and La if Sokka didn’t know her he’d have cried already.

He circles around her to peek back over the edge of the deck. 

Zenshiro dramatically drags himself onto the beach, gasping for air like a fish that’s been pulled from the water. Kosuke wanders past him, yawning away whatever tiredness remains from his watch shift last night, and flicking his wrist up to pull the water from Zen’s clothes, tossing it behind him.

Where it splashes over Kiyotaka.

The man coughs and both boys freeze, screaming and grabbing onto each other to take off across the beach and up the grassy hill into the treeline, Kiyotaka taking off after them with more speed than Sokka expected out of a guy with old bones; Michi crosses the shore from where he’d been helping Kagami settle the komodo-rhinos, pinching the bridge of his nose as he disappears after them.

“Guess Kosuke will be joining them to forage,” Chizue comments idly.

He looks at her, stamping down his dignity enough to jut out his bottom lip and give her the widest penguin-seal eyes he can muster. She raises her eyebrow at him and doesn’t stop until he deflates.

“Hey,” she nudges him lightly, offering him a rare, sincere smile, “you can harass me in the boiler room when we’re up and running again. I wanna see your thoughts on a balloon, anyway.”

He tilts his head, “a balloon?”

“Not important right now,” she shoos him towards the door below deck to head for the gangplank, “go, occupy yourself.”

“Jeez you sound like my sister.”

“I’ll get Jee-”

“I’m going!”

He finds his way down to the beach, casting a longing glance towards the boiler room before sighing heavily and wandering down onto the sand. 

It feels odd, being off the ship and not immediately getting attached to someone - being off the ship at all, if he’s honest - and sand is… new. Back at that village (Dusayo according to Kosuke) he hadn’t stepped foot off the deck, that was his first time up there after his embarrassingly poor escape attempt and  _ spirits _ it feels like so long ago now.

“Are you just going to stand there all day?”

He blinks, Jiang appearing in front of him with her arms folded behind her back; she’s ditched most of her armour in favour of something lighter, still in her Earth Kingdom colours and her fans still attached to her hip, and she’s twisted her hair into two thin braids. 

“No?” 

They stare at each other for a moment, 

She spins on her heel and starts heading towards Kagami and the komodo-rhinos, “you’re strange.”

He scoffs, following after her almost immediately, “oh  _ I’m  _ strange? Not the slew of other unexplained shit on that boat?”

“Well, it’s explained to me,” she says, sparing him a glance with a little quirk of her lips, “perhaps you should ask more questions.” 

Oh that’s  _ rich _ . As if he hasn’t posed many  _ unanswered  _ questions or just sat very lost for the past several weeks. He sticks his tongue out at her and she giggles, continuing across the shore until they come upon Kagami and the rhinos.

There’s six of them, two more than there are hawks; Flora (Sokka recognises her by the chip out of her left ear) is settled in the grass of the hill further up the land, a couple of the others graze around her and one other rubbing it’s tusks up against the trunk of one if the closest trees, still sticking by the others but far enough away so they’re not in the line of fire.

Kagami is stood with the remaining two, one with its front horn missing, and another snatching an apple out of her hand when she turns to scratch the other behind its ear.

Jiang jogs ahead, kneeling in the sand and petting the missing-horned rhino and mumbling to it in a small voice.

Kagami looks up at him, shoving another apple in the greedy rhino’s mouth when it nudges her, “so you can’t swim, huh?”

He groans, loudly and, at least a little, dramatically; so he yelled that louder than he thought.

She just laughs, “I’m not surprised, this is why Kosuke likes being tropical.”

“Shut up,” he grumbles, kicking at the sand. Then, he looks around, “where are the hawks?”

“The Captain’s bringing them out,” she grins, nodding towards the gangplank.

A sight Sokka didn’t expect to ever see, was human hawk-perch Zuko. He’s dropped some of his armour pieces like almost everyone else (Sokka guesses this is as close to a break day they get, and he feels bad Chizue’s stuck in a tiny engine room for all of it) but both of his shoulders are occupied by hawks, Summerstorm pruning his ponytail-thing, and Lightningbug chittering at Fireflake who’s under his arm again; Flashfire is perched on the hand not supporting the turtleduck, and she looks like she’s cooing at the Prince. He seems to be talking back.

Behind him, Iroh wanders out, the last Hawk ( _ “Sparks” _ Kagami whispers) perched happily on his shoulders and feeding out of his hand.

Featherweight comes sauntering out beside the two, her height an almost amusing sight when she’s just marching onto the sand with them.

“You guys haven’t sent another letter to the warriors yet?” Sokka asks, torn between being worried and letting that remaining bit of paranoia fester.

Jiang brushes the sand from her trousers as she stands, “Michi and the Captain have been trying to revise a letter that makes your Chief less worried about you.”

Because that’ll happen. Even the words  _ Fire Nation _ will set off his dad’s alarm bells, whether or not Zuko specified certain details about their current arrangement or not. 

Kagami reaches out to squeeze his shoulder, “maybe you can write something too, make sure he knows you’re alright.”

He nods, “I could do that.”

Summerstorm suddenly flies over his head, heading right over to Flora and settling on her back like she had back at the stables all those days ago - she’s a babysitter alright, what an interesting personality trait.

“Alright, Fiora,  _ alright _ .” He looks back to Kagami, pushing the head of the rhino nudging her away from her leg. “You’re going to take out my knees at this rate.”

He smiles dubiously as he watches Kagami make a small pile of fruits in the grass to get her over there.

“So there’s Flora  _ and _ Fiora?”

“Don’t ask me,” she shrugs, pushing loose hair away from her face, “I never met their old handlers.”

He hums, cautiously taking a step towards the rhino with the missing horn and holding out his hand, “what’s this guy called?” He tries not to grin when it pushes into his hand.

“That would be Rosco. Jiang is his favourite.”

The woman in question pats Rosco’s back and smiles, “we acquired him from a ship amongst Zhao’s fleet within the first month I joined.”

Sokka tilts his head, “who’s Zhao?”

The women share a look, one of those looks that Sokka remembers his dad and Gran-Gran exchanging far too often when he was younger. It's a how _ much are we supposed to tell him  _ look, a  _ there’s a lot to go into this  _ look, and it concerns him how hesitant they are to even begin to explain - let alone the fact they stole a rhino with a missing horn from him. 

He’s not in their good books, that’s for sure.

And somehow that’s terrifying.

They don’t have much more time to ponder their decision though, as Jee comes down from the hill, his face stone cold and serious, so much so Sokka’s actually worried something happened.

“Ichigo wants a spar,” he says instead, breaking his professional stance to pat Rosco’s head since he’s so close, “do you accept?”

Jiang places her hand over her fans, gives herself a moment of consideration, then bows, “I accept.”

Kagami gasps, an excited gasp as she ushers Fiora and Rosco up the hill with the rest of the rhinos, then comes back down and grasps Sokka’s wrist.

“C’mon, this’ll be great!”

She pulls him back up the shore, and they find their way up onto the hill that the scavenging group disappeared behind earlier. Zuko is sat cross-legged beside Iroh, his hand running down the back of Fireflake’s shell as he watches Sokka and Kagami come up towards them. He doesn’t say a thing when Sokka sits beside him, but Iroh greets them quite jovially.

“So, how does this work?” He asks, looking at Ichigo and Jiang stretching on either end of the space they’ve cordoned off for this spar.

Fireflake yaps at him, and Zuko only briefly spares him a glance, “just pay attention and find out.”

Kagami doesn’t provide any elaboration when he looks at her either.

He watches Jiang throw her boots off to the side and bury her feet in the sand, pulling the fans from her hip and opening them out; she holds them close, but they still glint dangerously beneath the sun.

“She fights with those things?” He thought they were just, like, an aesthetic thing.

No one answers him.

Ichigo grins, one of actual excitement versus the malicious ones she’s thrown at him, and pushes up her sleeves, the scar he usually sees only the ends of stretches upwards and spiders out around the rest of her arm; he doesn’t know what it is, but it’s definitely old, though also definitely from something deadly. She raises her fists, her hands light up in an instant with her flames concentrating forward into flickering daggers of pure heat. 

Sokka raises an eyebrow, he’s never seen anyone use firebending like that before. He wants to ask if it’s really fair that Ichigo bend against Jiang, but he gets the feeling they - Zuko particularly - will look at him in that way that makes him feel like he missed a big news at some point, so he keeps his mouth shut and turns back to the prepping fighters.

Jee stands between them, his attention flicking between their readying weapons and readying stances. “Bending is permitted if the land is  _ put back together _ by the end of this,” he says, throwing a  _ highly  _ pointed look at Jiang, “please avoid severely broken bones, and  _ don’t  _ hit the Wani.”

The pair nod, waiting. 

Jee raises his arm, and steps out from between them, his direction towards the hill; when he deems himself far enough away, his arm lowers rapidly.

Sokka tenses immediately, expecting one of them to burst forward, but neither do; Jiang shifts her footing slightly, Ichigo’s head tilting just a little in response. 

He decides to look over them in their hesitance (though, is it really hesitance?). He may not know much about other Nations’ particular fighting style - or his own beyond his boomerang, he hates to admit - but he does, in little ways, know Ichigo and Jiang - albeit from a distance for the former and he hasn’t necessarily seen either of them fight before. 

Now, Jiang isn’t weak by any means, physically she’s probably naturally built stronger than anyone here just by being purely Earth Kingdom, but she’s said so herself, she’s intelligence, not… offence. Just by the way she squares her shoulders and keeps a solid stance between her legs, Sokka can tell she’s trained more in defence - just like Yuka from the fleet. Except, unlike Yuka, Jiang doesn’t have all that much in the way of body mass, so he’s curious to see where her defence comes in. 

Ichigo, on the other hand, has a few other things to consider with her. For one, she’s got the height, because whatever Water Tribe genes are at play there, they really gave her a boost and it does not help with diminishing Sokka’s fear of her. For another, she’s nimble, that much is obvious by the way she moves just naturally, and there’s a certain amount of muscle to her that’s exposed just barely by her rolled-up sleeves. She’s the offence.

Both of them have weapons (well, weapon-adjacent for Ichigo) that speak to a favour of close combat, which is interesting in and of itself, but they’re both hyper-aware of each others’ movements and neither of them look like they’re going to go for an attack.

Then Ichigo’s foot sinks into the sand.

She blinks, looking down at it before her eyes zero in on Jiang with a look like she’s just remembered something. She clicks her tongue, shifting her other foot and twisting to throw one of her daggers forward, the fire thinning into more of a dart than a blade as it flies through the air.

Jiang twirls one of her fans and slices the flame apart, she swings the other outwards and the sands beneath Ichigo move again, flowing in the direction of her fan to try and take in Ichigo’s other ankle.

The firebender pivots on her trapped ankle, turning primarily at her hips as she lifts her free leg to avoid the hungry beach. She points outwards with one hand and creates a line of flame directly towards Jiang, pulling a blaze upwards to fast the other woman bounces back on her hands to flip over and avoid them; whatever concentration this breaks, it gives Ichigo the opportunity to swing her free leg around and kick out of her sand trap, propelling out of it and landing on less volatile ground.

She doesn’t waste a moment, darting forward and jutting her elbow into Jiang’s chin, causing her to stumble back but only by a single step. Ichigo forms another fire dagger, aiming a slice at her thigh, but Jiang blocks it with one of her fans, her other folded as she grabs Ichigo’s extended arm, shoving her shoulder under her opponent’s chest and throwing her whole weight over her back to land Ichigo in the sand again.

She flicks her fan again and the sands encase Ichigo’s arm up to her shoulder, she glares up at Jiang.

“I hate that you can do that.”

But without another word she stabs a flame forward and catches Jiang’s exposed ankle, bringing out a yelp and ripping her arm free to easily tackle the smaller woman down. 

They roll across the beach before forcefully separating, Jiang easily blocking another double-slice from the fire daggers with her fans and whirling them around to knock Ichigo’s wrists around to avoid her forming any more. 

She pushes the firebender back, with an easy kick to her shoulder, throwing off her balance enough for her to point a fan towards the grassland and pull a small ball of rock out of it.

With one flaring spin, the rock blasts into Ichigo’s chest and she ends up flat on her back with a groan.

Jiang squeaks, fans flying up to cover her mouth, “sorry!”

An arm raises up, “all good!” She throws another dart of flame out and Jiang, to her credit, lets it whizz past her ear with a fraction of contact to her skin, Ichigo chuckles, “think I’m done, though.”

Jee stands back up, his voice carrying, “the victory belongs to Jiang.”

Sokka sits there, mouth agape as the others give respectable applause.

“Let me have a look!” Kagami calls, standing from her position and sliding down the hill to jog onto the beach and squat beside her downed crewmate.

Jiang, chewing a little at the skin around her thumb, apologises again, “I really didn’t mean to hit you that hard.”

Ichigo snorts, sitting up with Kagami’s assistance, “don’t be sorry, I forget how good you are sometimes.”

Kagami smiles, “and I wouldn’t worry, she’s got thick skin, feels like just a solid bruise. Kosuke can sort some ice for you when he gets back, though in the meantime I’m ordering you to sit down.”

To oblige, Jiang picks her shoes off the ground and jabs her heel into the grass, sliding her foot along until a small wall of rock is formed; Ichigo immediately takes to lying down on it, while Jiang sits on the end and brushes the sand from her feet to pull her shoes back on.

Sokka looks at her, “how come I didn’t know you could do that?”

She blinks at him, looking between the beach sand and the new rock wall-seat, “it didn’t seem like prevalent information.”

_ Prevalent information  _ she says, like earthbending isn’t a pivotal part of her whole  _ thing _ . Well, that’s another bender to add to his list from this crew, first (and hopefully only) earthbender - he doesn’t need more  _ secrets _ , guys - and joining the ranks of oddballs with Kosuke and his water magic.

Jeez, all these guys are missing is an airbender.

He looks over to Kagami, “what do we do until the others get back?”

She glances up from her checks on Ichigo, smirking slightly, “you wanna spar?”

“After  _ that _ ?” He blurts out, incredulous, “absolutely  _ not _ .”

Fireflake quacks out a laugh at him, Zuko barely fails at hiding a snort behind a cough.

“Come help me round up the animals then, get them inside before dark.”

So he does, joined by Jiang after a check over of her minor burns.

The hawks appear at Kagami’s whistling, a well-practiced tune that’s different from the one she uses to catch the hawks when they’re coming back with messages; they swarm her and her arms, cooing almost like a greeting.

Jiang pulls him off to round up the rhinos, Rosco trotting over at her call and Fiora darting her way over when Sokka whistles with a moon-peach in his hand. The others gather at their own pace (a couple needing a food reward much like Fiora), and Flora gets a bit of added help from both Jiang and him.

Sokka clicks his tongue over by the treeline, Featherweight sauntering out pruning her wings and looking at him with that smug expression of hers (yes, Featherweight, he’s barely taller than you, but  _ one day _ ).

With a lead of food, and Kagami’s arms covered in hawks, they take the animals one-by-one back down to the stables where they take up their chosen places, and settle in for the night.

As they head back up, he glances once again down the corridor to the boiler room, and hopes Chizue is doing alright.

Just as they calm back down, the sun casting a golden glow behind them as it begins to set, the foraging group returns.

“Guys!” Zenshiro leaps out of the bushes with a yell, pulling a yelp out of Kagami and and a curse out of Ichigo, both sending him glares of varying intensity and he beams.

The others come out behind him, Michi running a hand through his hair with a basket of, just,  _ stuff _ held up on his shoulder by one hand, the other hauling Kosuke up the incline of the hill by the back of his shirt.

Kosuke presents his armfuls of berry branches with a grin.

“Zen wants to do a story night,” Kiyotaka says, pulling in the rear with a basket of mushrooms under his arm.

So, somehow that becomes a unanimous decision, a small fire is made from the closest bunch of sticks and Jee’s very practiced lighter-flame (popular amongst Chizue and her cigarettes), and the adults sending Sokka and Zuko off to go collect more kindling from around the nearest trees. Zuko grumbles, but leaves Fireflake with Iroh and drags Sokka off by the cuff of his sleeve.

They don’t talk all that much, it’s sort of like back when they were fishing near that village except with way less moving parts involved and even more questions plaguing Sokka’s mind - though none he really feels like verbalising at this moment.

He isn’t sure why he’s holding back, probably a mix of not expecting answers anyway and just the general understanding that someone will probably stumble out a response to them without him even needing to ask at some point or another. 

There’s just… there feels like a lot of ground to cover, because Sokka has all these facts and things he’s seen with his very eyes that lead him to just  _ be okay _ with existing in the same vicinity as the crew (the wanted posters come to mind), but those major things have so many holes surrounding them and Sokka just really wants to know how any of them got there in the first place.

His contemplating makes collecting go faster, and as he picks up his last twig, he comes to a decision on something else, just in the moment Zuko goes to walk past him back to the group.

“Hey,” he catches Zuko’s arm in an instant, the other boy tensing almost immediately and turning back to him, “I- um- I wanted to tell you I’ll write something, to send back to the warriors, I mean.”

“Oh,” the Prince’s eyes widen, his face stuttering over what to say more than his voice does, “thank you.”

Sokka pulls his hand away slowly, his skin feeling warm, and the two of them nod like they understand completely what is going on through the other’s head. They shift the kindling weight in their arms and head back towards the group, settling into their open spaces and piling their fuel beside the fire.

The stories exchanged are little things, and Sokka somewhat wants to know just how many stories these guys have that the others don’t know about. He’s also curious if Chizue has any tall tales, but she’s still burrowed away, and the others reassure him she’ll come out when she thinks she’s done enough (and that if she takes too long Kagami will go harass her to come outside herself).

Kiyotaka says one thing, “my best friend as a child is now a fortune teller,” and  _ never elaborates _ .

Jiang tells something of an Unagi, a story she says her grandmother told her once, she describes the sea serpent in detail when it comes up, and Sokka finds himself fascinated to see one in real life. 

Kosuke rambles a folktale from Dusayo, something spoken to scare children into staying inside at night, about spirits from the ocean lurking beneath the waves after dark and luring misbehaving souls under the surface to enter the spirit world and never return.

Iroh brings the most, some stories are shorter than others and some he drags out longer than Sokka - and, evidently, Zuko - feel they need to. He’s better at storytelling than Sokka expected him to be, because from what he’s come to understand, the other Nations aren’t much for passing tales down orally like they do at home, so hearing these ones are nice and makes him feel a little less far away.

“What’s the South Pole like?” Kosuke asks at some point, propping his chin up on his hands as he turns to face Sokka.

He startles for a moment, not quite ready for the eyes around the fire to turn right on him, “um, what do you wanna know?”

Kagami leans back on her hands, “what do you wanna share?”

“My Tribe is pretty small,” he says after a moment, “I remember, once, when it was bigger. We had more connection to the other Tribes out there, and I used to get excited as a kid to watch all the leaders come in on their mounts…”

He loses himself in his own stories, dredging up memories he thought he’d long forgotten, he remembers stories Gran-Gran would tell about the lights in the sky, he remembers his mother and the stories she used to tell of her childhood and what dad would get up to. He remembers a time he had men to look up to and idolise and a time the Tribe wasn’t isolated by the coast.

Then he remembers ashfall.

Loss.

And then he’s standing at the edge of a pool too deep to see the bottom of. The surface of the water covered in crystals of ice burning with an unending flame that threatens to melt everything. Even the ice he’s standing on.

“Thank you for telling us, Sokka,” Iroh says, laying a hand on his shoulder and pulling him away from that edge.

He nods, smile tight, and he looks over at the others giving him either reassuring looks or just generally pretending he probably didn’t talk about the raids that plague his dreams.

He catches sight of Zuko, watching the flickering of the fire with something hard in his eyes, it’s not quite like what happens when he gets frustrated or annoyed, but it’s something different, deeper.

“We’ll get you back to your people,” his gold eyes are like molten flame on their own, staring straight into Sokka’s, “on my honour, we will.”

Not for the first time, he finds he can only nod.

Then something flashes in the distance, out on the ocean a shadow with lights atop it, Sokka can’t make out what it is but Jiang beside him sits up with a sharp inhale. The others look at her strangely, and Sokka manages to find his voice.

“Zuko-”

* * *

“-What’s that?”

Zuko is thrown off by the question at first, blinking at Sokka’s wide blue eyes until he sees a similar look befall Kosuke beside Jiang. 

“ _ Agni _ ,” he curses, pushing himself to stand, “it’s a ship.”

That gets the attention of the others, Ichigo snuffing out the fire almost instantly and everyone getting to their feet. Fireflake makes a quiet noise, under Zuko’s arm, and his grip on her tightens.

Looking out into darkness, Zuko can just about see what the others can-

“Why is it  _ huge _ ?” The shakiness in Sokka’s voice is anything if not concerning.

Zuko swallows, “it’s a new one.”

“They have to have a lot of people, can you surrender?”

“Everybody’s dead if I do that,” be that the traditional way, the trip to the closest port, or whatever comes after, “including you.”

He’s not losing anyone, he resolved to himself every time someone new came aboard for an extended period of time, that was all he ever swore to himself. This isn’t the first time a ship has come to ‘check’ on them, but it is the first where they’re not in the best position to run away.

If they can get out of this situation, they’ll be fine, because these soldiers aren’t about to admit to every general there is that they attempted to kill him - banished Prince or not - and they’re not even likely to run back to their source for fear of whatever he may do.

Sokka grabs Jiang’s arm, either to ground himself or to hide the slight shaking of his hand, “why are your own people attacking you?”

“Zhao, probably.”

His eyebrows crease like he’s heard the name already, and Zuko wouldn’t be surprised if any of the others have said it off-handedly, he’s not particularly anyone’s best friend.

“Zuko,” Kagami says, tone hushed as if the ship will approach faster should she speak any louder, “Chizue.”

“Shit-” he inhales sharply, Chizue is still on board and who knows if she has any idea what’s approaching, “ _ okay _ .”

Uncle takes Fireflake out of his arms without him needing to ask, and his arms take the chance to move. He weaves through the air in front of him, muttering possibilities and plans as the ship stalks closer; it’s a slow one, they could outrun it if Chizue got enough of the engine patched up, but they’d need to incapacitate enough of the soldiers on that ship to be able to have enough of a headstart to avoid looking over their shoulder all night.

“Zen.” The boy looks up. “Can you see anything from up there?” Zuko points up to one of the trees at the top of the hill.

He dashes from their gathering immediately, pulling himself effortlessly up the branches and pushing his hair from his face to try and get a good look at the approaching vessel.

“I think they have blasting jelly,” he announces after a moment of staring, “but it looks like most of them are gearing up to come onto land.”

All of their weapons are on board too.

“Alright,” Zuko swallows, concentrating his voice into that solid, hard one that the rest of them listen to when they’re in a situation like this, “I will head for the Wani  _ alone _ , I will find Chizue, and we will see what state the ship is in. If we can make an escape, I will come out with what weapons I can carry and you  _ incapacitate _ those coming onto land to give us a chance to escape. Understood?”

“Understood,” the rest of them chorus.

Uncle’s looking at him in that way he always does when he takes charge, and Sokka has an odd glint to his eye - though most of what he’s seen of the crew is an odd, disorganised mess of people somehow surviving together.

He reaches forward and grabs him, ignoring the surprised yelp and levelling him with a serious look, “stay with Kagami,” he orders, “she’ll keep you safe.”

It takes a moment for Sokka to nod, glancing back at Kagami with a slight raise of his eyebrow, “grab my boomerang, I can help.”

“Okay.”

Zuko lets him go and he gives another glance at the rest of the crew, each of them communicating with him in their own ways; he watches his Uncle the longest.

Then he’s one with the shadows. 

It’s much harder to stick to the darkness without his Blue Spirit gear, but the island has little natural light beyond Tui above it, and he prays that the moon spirit will be kind to him tonight, all he wants to do is keep his crew safe.

When he makes it to the Wani, the ship in the distance has stopped, but even with his uneven vision, Zuko can see the lifeboats lowering, they’ll be on land faster than he makes it out, but he risks a glance backwards and finds the campsite empty. The others are getting ready.

Hopefully Fireflake will be fine. 

~~ Hopefully Sokka will be fine. ~~

On board, he doesn’t care about the noise he makes, dashing through the corridors down to the armoury, he’s halfway there when he nearly collides with Chizue, her arms full of stuff and her eyes wide.

“I saw it when I was coming back up,” she says in explanation, holding up the pile of weapons, “grabbed what I could, how is everyone else?”

“Preparing,” Zuko says, grabbing his dao and slipping them onto his back, “did you grab Sokka’s boomerang.”

Her eyebrows furrow for a moment, shifting the weight of Michi’s bow and quiver onto her shoulder to hold up Kiyotaka’s throwing knives in one hand and Sokka’s boomerang in the other; her sai are at her hips, recently sharpened it looks like.

Zuko nods, taking the Water Tribe weapon and giving her a moment to hold the other weapons properly before starting back towards the gangplank, “they’re likely already on land, Zenshiro said they likely had blasting jelly.”

“Really?” she asks, incredulous, “spirits, how much did he pay them?”

“Nothing, I assume,” that’s the worst part, “this is for promotion points.”

Promotions these men won’t get if this is the usual culprit. 

“How well do you think you can get us out of here?”

Chizue bites her lip, “I can get us away, but we’ll have to drift overnight if we want the engine to last enough for me to get to it in the morning and still have something to work with.”

“Is it that bad?”

“They don’t make parts for her anymore, Captain, I’m doing what I can,” she purses her lips, “but I think we’re going to have to do something in the next month or two.”

“I know,” he offers what gratitude he can, “thank you.”

They weave back to the gangplank, Zuko’s free hand itching around the hilt of his joined dao, ready to pull it at a moment's notice. They come back to find two soldiers readying 

But they don’t have to worry about them.

“Hey guys!” Michi beams, knocking the two soldiers in front of them together and watching them drop, gasping at Chizue, “you got my bow!”

She snorts, swinging said weapon off her shoulder and tossing it to him; the quiver always looks rather small around his shoulders, but the bow fits perfectly into his hand, and he runs his thumb over the red markings fondly.

Taka appears at Zuko’s other side and nearly scares him half to death, he leans around Zuko to pluck his knives out of Chizue’s hands, leaving her free to take her sai into them instead and dart off towards Kagami.

“Please just cover Michi,” Zuko orders, looking at the old, stubborn man.

“I  _ know _ ,” Taka responds, waving him off as if the next second he  _ doesn’t _ stab a soldier in the thigh before knocking them down with an elbow to the neck.

Zuko tries not to wince.

He sees Sokka waving at him from a distance then, watching him make the shape of his boomerang in the air with a thumbs up.

Zuko holds it up, calling out to him, “uh… catch?”

Sokka makes an odd face, one morphing into a slightly horrified one as Zuko throws the boomerang towards him. It arcs higher than it’s supposed to, and Sokka has to jump (and get a platform kicked up by Jiang) to catch it.

He looks across the field at Zuko and throws his arms out, “don’t throw it like  _ that _ !”

Zuko doesn’t even have time to think about apologising. 

A soldier comes up to his empty side and aims a flaming punch for his side; he ducks under it easily, sweeping the legs out from beneath them and letting them knock their head against the side of the Wani.

He takes a second to move them out of the water when they’re down and then has a chance to look at the soldier and their uniform is new. All of them are.

His fist clenches at his side.

_ Bastard _ .

He tries to jump into action without too much thought, different fights going on across this section of the island. But they’re new, the soldiers, probably not equipped to take on the people that make up his crew; they may be outnumbered, but they’re outmatched by leagues.

They were lied to, that’s all he can think.

A line of soldiers get trapped up to their knees in Jiang’s shifting sands, the grains following her arms as she uses one of her legs to kick up a chunk of rock and launch it at the two closest to her. Sokka’s boomerang whizzes over his head as he darts forward to jab one of them at the base of their skull with the hilt of his dao, Zenshiro coming out of the shadows to do something similar with his fist to the one next to him.

Sokka’s boomerang circles around and manages to catch the last guy in the back of the head on its return; the cheer in the distance is enough to make Zenshiro snort.

Over by where the rhinos were grazing, the twins bounce off each other easily. Something about the moon makes Kosuke’s bending easier, his katas (firebending ones) enough to freeze most of the people surrounding him. From the shadows Ichigo incapacitates them, not willing to risk even these people seeing her face, but she takes them out swiftly, quietly, in a way Zuko can only envy.

At the base of the hill, Kagami has her own arc of unconscious men around her, her hands folded behind her back with one fist clenched and the other gripping her opposite wrist. Chizue stands between two other unconscious soldiers, twirling her sai around her hands; the pair offer little smiles to each other.

Even Fireflake makes herself useful, quacking and hissing at a few straying soldiers enough for Uncle and Jee to deal with them.

Up on the hill, Zuko can see Kiyotaka spinning his throwing knives around his fingers, watching Michi as he tries to line up a shot, arrow set alight with Ichigo’s passing aid.

Zuko can almost hear the exact words they say to each other.

“Can you make it?”

“ _ Can I make it _ , he says.”

He watches the shot fly true, no doubt in his mind that Michi will make the shot. The arrow meets its mark with precision, and the side of the ship bursting into flames; it’s a sturdier build, the blasting jelly won’t take it out (Zuko hopes) but it gives them enough time to move.

“There’s plenty of food here to keep them alive until help comes,” Jee says, his tone one leaving no arguments, they can’t afford it, Zuko knows, “come on.”

Zuko makes sure he counts eleven people and one turtleduck climbing aboard before he even considers stepping a foot on board.

**~#~**

As the Wani floats quietly through the ocean, all lights off besides the tiny flames from Ichigo and Iroh’s hands, and the even smaller flicker of the end of Chizue’s cigarette.

Zuko knows she hasn’t smoked as much since Sokka started being in the same room as her more often, but with the engine repairs barely halfway done and people on their tail for no apparent reason yet, he can understand why she’d go back to it tonight.

The energy is a strange mix of charged and subdued around them, Zuko can tell some of his crew are wound too tight to sleep properly tonight, but he can also see the exhaustion peeking through the eyes of some of the others. For him, he isn’t sure where he stands yet.

Uncle had suggested they all gather out on deck and have an impromptu music night to calm everyone down, Jee’s the only one with his instrument though, and that’s okay, because his lute playing isn’t  _ that _ bad a choice for a paranoid evening.

“Zhao,” Zenshiro says eventually, voicing the thoughts of everyone as it teeters on being knife-sharp.

Sokka, between the boy and Kagami, scrunches his face up but doesn’t ask, his boomerang is still in his hand, kept close like his parka the day he got it back (that now resides as his ‘favourite pillow’ in his room). 

Part of Zuko wants to explain, because he feels like it would clear up a lot for them all, but at the same time, he can’t find it in him to give Zhao much more space in his mind than he’s already taking up. That man has been a thorn in Zuko’s side since the beginning and there’s never a moment Zuko doesn’t wish he had the guts to just push him into the ocean.

Chizue breathes out a puff of smoke, leaning back on her arm and glaring at her hand, “everyday I regret not killing that bastard when I had the chance.”

“Yes,” Jee sighs, turning away from tuning his lute to look at her, “because that would have made it so much easier to get you off the execution line, Chi.”

Sokka chokes on the air, “ _ excuse me _ !?” Michi leans around Zenshiro to pat his back when he coughs some more.

“It’s nothing, kid,” Chizue mutters, fingers tightening around her cigarette until she smiles (forced, Zuko can tell) at the rest of them, “Imagine me not having to deal with you assholes for the last three years,” she snorts, “I’d take it.”

Zenshiro picks up the mood lightener faster than anyone, stretching his leg out to nudge her outstretched leg with his foot, “aw, c’mon, you love us.”

She slaps his shoe, “you were a snotty teenager and you know it.”

“Hey I was  _ vulnerable _ !” He declares, feigning hurt, before bringing a beaming smile back to his face and pointing at her, “and that wasn’t a no!”

Jee starts playing his lute soon after.

* * *

As the night carries, nobody returns to their quarters, perfectly content to stay out in the dark under the light firelight of Iroh and Ichigo’s flames that they place into oil lanterns Kagami collects from her room when they begin to grow tired.

Sokka just sort of watches them all, how they drift around each other and settle into quiet conversations on the backdrop of Jee’s tune.

Him watching is the only reason he sees Zenshiro pull away, his eyes tracking the older boy as he wanders over to the lower cabin and jumps to pull himself to sit on top of it. His eyes scanning the gathered crew, but also drifting to view the endless sea surrounding them, his attention clouded and distant.

Sokka finds it in him to stand too, not pulling away from any particular conversation, and weaving between a few of the others to make his way over. Zenshiro doesn’t make it obvious if he sees Sokka or not, but when Sokka comes to a decent distance from where the boy sits, he pauses.

“What are you guys doing?” He asks, finding his voice after a moment, “I get that you’re trying to avoid me and answers officially meeting, but I’d like to know what’s had you out here for  _ three years _ .”

Three years means almost-nineteen Zenshiro would have been almost-sixteen Zenshiro, likely a completely different person from the boy watching him now. Chizue had called him snotty, he’d called himself vulnerable, and Sokka finds himself a little afraid to find out what that means.

Three years means just-turned-sixteen Zuko would have been just-turned- _ thirteen _ Zuko and who in their right mind would put a  _ kid _ in charge of a boat like this? How many of the crew were even here when they first set off? Most of them don’t exactly strike him as Fire Nation natives.

“It’s complicated,” Zenshiro says, looking down at him, “really,  _ really _ complicated.”

Sokka takes another careful step forward, “what’s complicated mean?”

“We have, like, one step to a plan, and we don’t even know what we’re doing if we ever accomplish it,” he lets out a bitter laugh, a sound so jarring coming out of his mouth, “Zuko has to make a decision if that ever happens. He’s considered a lot of options and I trust him to do what’s right but…”

He trails off, rubbing at his collar. Sokka takes the last few steps towards him and Zenshiro helps pull him up to sit beside him, legs dangling down the wall as he looks over the lulling energy of the music night; Jee plays something soft on his lute and Zuko looks like he’s falling asleep against his uncle’s leg, Fireflake clambering into his lap after getting some snack from Jiang. 

“Parents are really hard to go against,” Zen pipes up. Sokka glances over and from under his collar he’s pulled some sort of necklace, a chain with some tags hanging from it, “even when you have a feeling they’re wrong.”

They make eye contact for only a second before the chain is off and pressed into Sokka’s palm. The metal is warm from hiding beneath Zenshiro’s clothes, presumably, all the time, but it feels worn beneath the pads of his fingers and he wonders how much more of the war the boy beside him has seen.

He looks down at the tags and the first thing that strikes him is the name pressed into them, it isn’t Zenshiro’s, that much is obvious- or, at least, it’s not Zenshiro’s name  _ now _ . The second thing that strikes him is-

“Forty-first… Division?” He looks up, over to the boy who won’t look at him, “what’s that?”

“My dad put me in it,” now he sounds detached, distant from some sort of memory Sokka can’t even begin to understand. “I wasn’t old enough mind you, but, he said if I wanted to be a real man, I should,” he swallows, “then I- um- I overheard some things, I panicked, and things took a turn that nobody was ready for and, well, you saw my wanted poster.”

There’s more to that, Sokka knows, the way Zenshiro’s hands clench and his eyes harden more than he thinks they ever should. If this is how he had looked when Sokka met him, the idea of that just being from some inherent evil he was born with would have stuck and stayed, but now, there’s something else, because Sokka recognises that this - whatever it is - is directed to a very particular person that can’t be reached anymore.

Another bitter laugh escapes him, “I should hate the Fire Nation, for what happened… but my family.” 

Zenshiro looks back across the deck, the music still low, Sokka watches him as his eyes ghost over Iroh with Zuko, Chizue and Kagami laughing softly as they try to do some sort of slow dance with Chizue insisting she lead. They catch Ichigo finally sleeping, curled beneath a blanket with her head on Kosuke’s lap as he makes pleasant conversation with Jiang over tea; Kiyotaka watches the scene from where he sits the same sort of fondness that reminds Sokka of Gran-Gran.

Zenshiro’s eyes say more than his mouth does, “they’re still Fire Nation. I am too, if only half, and my loyalty lies here, with a boy who had every opportunity to turn me in when we first met,” a softer smile, one more like the Zenshiro Sokka sees during the day, overtakes whatever hardness remains, “I never found out why he didn’t until one night a little like this, six months after I joined him.”

Sokka presses the tags back into Zenshiro’s hands and he looks back to when the Prince is, his hands against Fireflake’s shell even in sleep, “he sounds like a good person.”

“The best.”

They sit quietly for a little while longer. A cool night breeze brushes against Sokka’s skin and he overlooks the crew as they pack up and move back inside, those asleep carried by those closest and looking calmer than Sokka’s ever seen them before. 

It’s peaceful. 

“Hey Sokka?”

“Yeah?”

“I want you to know: nobody here will tell you that what happened to your village, or the rest of the world, is okay, and I don’t think you’ll find anyone who tells you that everything they’ve done in the past was okay either.” He speaks slowly, making sure Sokka absorbs every single word he’s saying. 

He can only nod.

“What I’m trying to say, is that we’re on your side, Sokka, we’re just… we just kind of have to be on our own team, for a while, if not until this is over,” he exhales heavily, “because ashmakers can’t be trusted.”

But they can. These ones can.

Tui and La. 

Sokka trusts these ash- these firebenders. 

Sokka trusts these  _ people _ .

He trusts them.

* * *

Katara doesn’t know what she’s doing out here. It’s bitter, it’s cold, and she’s alone. She never thought she’d long for Sokka’s incessant chatter until it isn’t here to drive her crazy on these fishing trips.

Now it’s just her.

Just her and this stupid boat she can barely stand the sight of anymore without he stupid big brother in it.

Fishing isn’t supposed to be like this. Isolated.

She can’t even waterbend anymore without thinking of him, his ridiculous ‘magic water’ comments have never felt like such a painful memory as these past weeks she’s tried to even lift a droplet and just  _ thought  _ about him.

Gran Gran has resigned herself to accepting he’s dead, lost to the ice like so many people she knew in her childhood. Katara doesn’t know if she’s just jaded or if she’s much better at hiding her feelings than Katara is.

Katara  _ can’t _ . She can’t lose someone else, and she can’t hide the fact that this is  _ destroying her _ every second of every day she doesn’t have an answer to what happened. The only solace she has is that she got to hug him before he disappeared.

That’s why she’s out here, really. Home is too much, too many consoling expressions or questions from the kids and it’s all  _ too much _ when they don’t even know what happened. Sokka’s alive, he has to be, she knows he has to be; he’s too stubborn to go out like that, cold and alone, it’s not badass enough for him.

_ It’s not _ .

“Sokka!” Her voice has barely recovered from the last time she was out here, still somewhat hoarse from the grating cold against her throat. 

That feels like weeks ago, because she has to sneak or run or scream her way out of the village to go anywhere by herself anymore. Somehow the stifling feels worse than the looks or the questions, because they’re forcing her to accept a fact that just isn’t -  _ can’t  _ be - true, and she’s not about to give up hope so easily. 

She can’t do that to herself. She can’t do that to  _ Sokka _ .

Aside from home, the closest Tribe is up on the plateau a two-day sail away from where she is. There is a perfectly good chance Sokka could be there, maybe he got lost and they found him, maybe he went up there himself to see if there was anyone willing left to help build the village back up.

She doesn’t know if she’s going to risk the trip there by herself yet, she’s never been, doesn’t know if she’s capable of fighting off anybody who may wish to cause her harm. 

But she’d do anything to get Sokka back.

“Please! Where are you!” 

Yet she’s screaming into a void that doesn’t care about what she’d do. 

She drops back into her seat, the wood creaking beneath her and the boat rocking just slightly as it continues to float unaided down the river. She slumps further, sitting in the base of the boat with her ankles tangled in the fishing net that’s sat unused in here for weeks; her arms rest against the side and she hides her face within the sleeves of her parka, letting the first of many teardrops fall.

(It isn’t even her parka, it’s one of Sokka’s he left behind. The shoulders are too wide for her and the sleeves almost double as gloves, the hood keeps trying to hide her eyes and the bottom goes further down her leg than she’s used to. But it’s  _ his _ , and that’s all that really matters in the end, that it's his and he’s protecting her from the cold everyone is so adamant to say stole him from her.)

She sobs a good while, the fishing boat floating forward at its own pace through whatever path La decides. When her sleeves are wet and her eyes are sore, she looks up and over the edge of the boat, letting a single teardrop drip into the arctic waters as she whimpers into the air.

“Can someone just give me  _ anything _ ?”

Her boat collides with something.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright we have a few options for character glossaries;  
> 1) It can be a simple 'fic' that I edit on the regular on my profile, potentially splitting characters by group or location that I can link in my full-fic beginning note  
> 2) It could be a bonus chapter in this fic if that's easier for folk (that would only get the characters in one massive list with titles tho, so, there's a con)  
> 3) It can be a few tumblr posts collected into one masterlist where they're split by crew/location so those wanting to only see specific character groups don't have to go through anything else; that can be linked in my tumblr bio so no one loses it ~ and also linked in the full-fic beginning note  
> OR  
> 4) We don't have to have one at all if you guys are picking up on characters lmao
> 
> So whatever y'all are up for, totally let me know 💛

**Author's Note:**

> Comments and kudos well and truly fuel me, so like, indulge me if you'd like ?
> 
> For anyone who wants it, you can find my tumblr [here](https://lion-hearts136.tumblr.com/) !


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